Aoi

Aoi had always felt as though she was standing one step outside everyone else's world. Part of it came from growing up differently.

She barely remembered her mother. The woman had left when she was young, choosing another life with another man. For years, it had been just Aoi and her father. Perhaps because of that, some of Aoi's happiest memories were spent listening to him read.

Every evening, after dinner, her father would pull a worn book from the shelf and read aloud while she listened from the couch beside him. Tales of adventurers crossing distant seas, heroes chasing impossible dreams, and lovers who waited years to be reunited filled the small apartment. By the time she entered high school, Aoi had fallen hopelessly in love with books.

Unfortunately, books did not make conversations any easier.

While her classmates excitedly discussed the latest trends, celebrity scandals, and relationship drama, Aoi often found herself with nothing to add, she listened as her friends whispered about crushes and breakups that seemed to happen one after another.

Aoi never understood how they could move on so quickly. It wasn't that she thought they were wrong. She simply couldn't relate. The stories she had grown up reading spoke of bonds that endured hardships, distances, and even years apart. Compared to that, the excitement surrounding every new confession or relationship felt strangely foreign to her. The stories left their mark on her in ways she didn't fully realize. Somewhere between the pages of countless novels, Aoi had developed expectations that reality rarely bothered to meet.

She wanted friendships that lasted years. Conversations that meant something. Promises people actually kept. She wanted the kind of connections she had read about in stories, ones that changed people, stayed with them, and survived the passing of time.

Life, however, seemed far less interested in grand narratives. Classmates drifted apart. Friendships formed and dissolved. Crushes appeared one week and disappeared the next. Everyone seemed comfortable moving forward but Aoi wasn't. Sometimes she felt as though she had spent so much time reading stories that she had forgotten how to live in the real world or perhaps she had simply expected too much from it.

Sometimes she wondered if there was something wrong with her. Other times, she felt as though she had been born in the wrong generation entirely. Whatever the reason, a small distance always seemed to exist between Aoi and everyone else. Not enough to make her an outcast, just enough to make her feel alone.