Yanami Anna was feeling miserable.
Although she still felt a little unwilling to accept it, the chat records on her phone were right there, reminding her in black text on a white screen that another one of her childhood friends had disappeared.
Anna took out her phone.
On the LINE screen, the other person’s profile picture had turned gray.
Was it because he was already on the plane and had no internet?
But the chat history was still there.
16:45
[Hakamada Sousuke: Anna, thanks for cheering me on.
I’m going to confess my feelings to Karen now.]
[Yanami Anna: Mm.
But if you get rejected, I’ll be kind enough to listen to you complain.]
17:13
[Hakamada Sousuke: Anna, Karen said yes!]
[Hakamada Sousuke: (͡°͜ʖ͡°)✧]
[Yanami Anna: Ah!
Congratulations!]
[Hakamada Sousuke: By the way, I’ve decided to study abroad in England with Karen!]
[Hakamada Sousuke: (͡°͜ʖ͡°)✧]
[Yanami Anna: ?]
[Yanami Anna: England?
Are you serious?]
[Hakamada Sousuke: Yep.
The flight is tomorrow.
Karen already booked it for me!]
[Yanami Anna: ?
What about your family in Japan?
Did your mom agree to this?]
[Hakamada Sousuke: Mother, of course, agreed!]
[Hakamada Sousuke: Anyway, Anna, thanks for encouraging me.
But I need to go pack for England now.
I hope you find a boyfriend in high school too!]
[Hakamada Sousuke: (͡°͜ʖ͡°)✧]
[Yanami Anna: No, Sousuke, wait a second.
With your English level, isn’t England way too early for you?
And you’re still a minor, you know?
Can you really live by yourself over there?
Have you thought about any of this?
Don’t let the excitement go to your head!]
[Hakamada Sousuke: It’ll be fine as long as Karen is with me.]
[Hakamada Sousuke: Photo of him holding hands with Karen.jpg]
[Hakamada Sousuke: But even after I go to England, let’s keep in touch, Anna.
I’ll send you an invitation when we get married, so remember to come visit England!]
[Hakamada Sousuke: (͡°͜ʖ͡°)✧]
…
“Visit, you idiot!
I hope that vixen dumps you in England and leaves you there as a homeless bum!”
Anna angrily grabbed the unopened cup of milk tea in front of her.
Taking the straw, she imagined the plastic lid as the head of her childhood friend, Hakamada Sousuke, then stabbed it straight through.
She stabbed it again and again, poking several holes into the plastic lid.
Only then did Anna finally feel like she had vented some of the resentment in her chest.
Suddenly, she started muttering to herself.
“It’s not like I liked him anyway.
Sure, we were childhood friends, and we got along pretty well, but it’s not like I actually liked him.”
Although no one around her was listening to her loser’s declaration, what Anna said was true.
“If Ren hadn’t moved away when we were kids, there’s no way I would’ve gotten that close to Sousuke.”
She pouted again and looked at the milk tea lid she had stabbed into a mess.
Somehow, she had completely lost her appetite.
But her memories still drifted back to the past.
When Anna was little, she had two childhood friends.
The first was Hakamada Sousuke, who lived next door to her house.
The second was named Ayanokouji Ren, who also lived next door to her house…
or rather, in a huge mansion on the next street over.
It was a three-story Western-style building, built in a luxurious and grand Baroque style.
The adults often said that mansion was worth several hundred million yen.
As a child, Anna had no idea how much that was, so her mother told her that several hundred million yen meant enough of her favorite ice cream to pile up into a castle like Princess Elsa’s.
Princess Elsa was the main character from Frozen, the most popular animated movie at the time.
Anna would sometimes hum a few lines of “Let It Go” too.
So when her mother said several hundred million yen was basically an ice cream version of Princess Elsa’s castle, Anna’s eyes immediately sparkled.
She treated that mansion like a treasure vault and dragged Hakamada Sousuke along for an adventure.
Under cover of night, they followed behind a black car, slipped through the heavy iron gate, and hid somewhere the security guards could not see.
That was the first time she met Ayanokouji Ren.
His golden hair shone faintly under the moonlight.
She could vaguely see that his beautiful eyes had golden irises.
His face was still a little childish, but his features were already sharp and well-defined.
His height was not much taller than hers, which meant he was probably around the same age.
Even so, his shoulders were somewhat broad, likely because he naturally had a larger frame.
Before that, Anna had always thought Sousuke was already handsome enough.
Otherwise, she would not have followed him around.
But even so, after seeing that face, she had no choice but to admit the value of the phrase, “There is always someone better.”
Because of that, Anna could barely suppress the urge to get to know him.
Besides being handsome, the boy, who looked about the same age as her, was clearly the child of the owner of that mansion.
She could already see the ice cream castle waving at her.
Unfortunately, reality proved that an ice cream castle was still too exaggerated.
Anna and Sousuke only managed to receive about three months’ worth of unlimited ice cream.
After all, out of the entire year, only summer was really suitable for eating ice cream.
That was right.
Yanami Anna, Hakamada Sousuke, and Ayanokouji Ren had played together for one year when they were children.
But that year passed in the blink of an eye, through the cicadas of summer, the fallen leaves of autumn, and the first snow of winter.
Then, on another night beneath the cold moonlight, Ren left.
Unlike Sousuke, he did not leave behind any annoying emoticons.
In fact, he did not leave behind any message at all.
It was not until Anna stood on tiptoe in front of the security guard like usual and said, “Mister, open the gate.
I want to go in and play with Ren,” that she learned from the guard that he had gone abroad.
After that, there was no news of him at all.
Back then, smartphones were not common yet.
Just graduating from elementary school was enough to lose contact with old friends, let alone someone going overseas.
That was probably why Anna felt that Sousuke, the one who had always stayed by her side, was worth cherishing.
Unfortunately, now he is going abroad too.
“What the heck?
All my childhood friends ran overseas.
Am I really that unlucky?”
Anna shook the milk tea in her hand.
It was clearly just milk tea, and she had not even taken a single sip, yet somehow she felt a little drunk.
“Still, according to manga logic, Ren probably doesn’t count as a childhood friend,” Anna said, trying to comfort herself.
He was more like a white moonlight.
In shoujo manga, there was always a character like that, someone who left the stage early.
At the very beginning of the heroine’s life, he left behind a vivid stroke of color, then drifted away and disappeared into the crowd.
They had never truly begun anything.
They had not even made any clear promise to miss each other or wait for each other.
It was only because, at the most innocent and tender age of her life, he had descended like moonlight and illuminated one small patch of sky.
“But if I put it that way, doesn’t that make me the heroine?”
“As for Sousuke…
he was Ren’s…
replacement meal.
Right, a substitute!”
Anna remembered that phrase being used to make shifting feelings sound less shameful.
Once she had realized that, she had even looked it up specifically.
“Exactly.
He was just a replacement meal.”
But now both the main dish and the replacement meal had run away.
As soon as she thought of that, food-loving Anna lowered her head again.
If she really was the heroine, then shouldn’t the male lead appear already?
Suddenly, someone sat down across from her.
A frivolous voice struck up a conversation.
“Hey, gorgeous.
This seat isn’t taken, right?”
It really was not taken.
But Anna was in a terrible mood, and she only found the voice annoying.
Right now, she had no interest in being hit on by anyone.
“There are so many empty seats!
Can’t you sit somewhere else?”
Anna raised her head angrily.
But the moment her eyes met those golden eyes across from her, she froze.
She felt her heartbeat skip.
“You’re…
Ayanokouji…
Ren?”