Reconciliation

The roaring of bombs and rockets soared in the sky, and the bullets that were fired from the clouds persistently hit against my cheeks as they and my tears ran down my face.

I was outside the hotel, strolling up and down the dimly lit street with no protection from nature's own tears. I was able to cool off and think about what happened. I asked her impossible questions that had no answers. I was unfair and immature to a fragile and endearing girl.

I had to ask myself an impossible question too:
Why did you do that?

Although, maybe there was an answer to that:
'Cause I'm pathetic.

My head had exploded, and she was in the area of effect.

I kept thinking about the hurt on her face and in her voice, and soon felt pain. I thought I had been pressing my teeth together, but the sting on my lips came from the rain, and I touched them with my fingertips and saw blood. Despite suffering depression for six years, I never believed self-infliction was a coping mechanism, and I never deceived myself enough to go over the threshold into suicide. That being said, I did believe this pain was deserved.

I sat on a lonesome and swamped bench and thought, I don't understand how my best memories with my newly discovered childhood friend could turn into a fallin' out that was my fault, yet blame wasn't placed on me?

I knew from the moment I stepped out of the hotel room that there was no future where we didn't talk about the situation any further. We had to go back to the orphanage eventually. However, there were different futures depending on the outcome of the conflict. Would we stay as friends? Or would we become distant because of me again?

I don't want that. I don't want to lose the girl I've liked for so long…
I realized a harvested emotion.

I believed I had fallen for her in the year that I knew her in my second life, but the memories finally showcased their purpose and I knew I had liked her in my original life too. It may have been a child's crush, emotions weren't affected by amnesia and continued to develop.

The memories were a good thing, and the negatives that I blindly focused on had no effects that lasted as long as the positive ones. She was my friend. My best friend.

I was angry that she didn't tell me the truth, but she did. She was the only person to visit me at the hospital. Not my teachers, not my classmates, not any other family, only her. I was her light, and she was traumatized when her light and only friend forgot her. She had every reason to be scared, and I proved her point as to why.

Our friendship fell to the ground from the tree it was growing from. I had a choice of picking it up or letting it rot. The best apples were those that were picked when the ripening was perfect, and the perfect timing was a small window. Our relationship — whether it was friendship or something less at this point — had a small window that I needed to time right if I didn't want to lose it, but harvest it.

I desired to be a milquetoast person no longer, but instead someone who was committed and would do anything to prevent a falling out. I had feelings of gratitude and adoration for her, none of hatred or resentment. I needed to let her know that.

The rain that pelted my face washed it clean of my sorrows and carried them towards the sewers to drown. I dreaded the upcoming conversation, but knew it was necessary. I stood up from the bench and forced my freezing legs to trudge back to the hotel.

The lack of lighting without a soul in sight during the walk made the sight of a silhouette outside the hotel entrance approaching me all the more terrifying. Fortunately, that feeling didn't have time to evolve to anything deeper, because I knew how to put faces onto silhouettes. I took my steps at the speed of a sloth.
"Ri-Ringomori…san? What are you—"

She picked up her speed and dove into my chest, wrapping her arms around me and tightening like a boa constrictor. There was a tickle on my chest and I dropped my eyes to see her nestling around in my soaked hoodie. My arms lacked the strength to pull her away from my drenched body, so I chose to hold her smaller body the same way she held me and took a few strides forward so I could bring us under the hotel awning.

Even the bitterly cold was no match for her warmth.

She finally lifted her face and we connected the windows to our souls. I had seen her at her highest and lowest, but never at her angriest until that moment.

It wasn't the right time to think about it, but even her angered expression was partially cute. She lifted to her tiptoes and slapped my forehead and kept her hand there. She couldn't keep a frown for long, as it transitioned to a quiet smile blended with concern.

Without saying a word, she grabbed my hand and escorted me all the way back to our hotel room – my frigid tremblings were awash with warm comfort. I was forced to enter the bathroom where a clean towel and a change of clothes was laid out. I hadn't known there was a Lost & Found that kept and washed clean clothes.

I took a second shower and she sat criss-cross on the bed and invited me to do the same. The TV was off and the curtains were closed. Throughout my friendships with her and Daishi, along with my social ineptitude, I had never had a quarrel with anyone. Based on her insecurity to the situation, neither had she.

All I knew about the upcoming process was from D4Dream and the RONDselia manga, they called it "Reconciliation."

There were plenty of memorable experiences of the trip before this point, but this one would be the one that I'd remember most vividly, despite how embarrassed and guilty I was.

First and foremost, I apologized. She apologized too, but there was no reality where I'd let her take any blame. Still, she insisted on taking some, saying she was sorry for not telling me the truth during our recent time together, because she was scared and selfish for enjoying the growth of a new relationship. I explained the confusion and anxiety I felt with the return of my memories, and I was wrongfully projecting my pain onto her out of fear. She went outside to find me as I went inside to find her. She explained that she wasn't mad for what I said in the hotel room, but rather for walking out into a life-threatening storm late at night. We understood how the other felt.

While many people probably experienced that kind of fighting and making up, we believed it was specific to us simply because we had a special joke to conclude it.

"We're [I'm] sorry," we said in unison.