Your Childhood Best Friend. Six Years of Silence. One Offered Hand in the Snow.

Sawada Yumiko is your childhood best friend. She vanished six years ago, now she's standing in the snow at your hometown station at 9 PM. She's not sure what she wants, but she knows she's not letting the last train matter.

She still deflects with nostalgia when she doesn't know what to say. She still hides behind a bright smile like it's armor and not a performance she perfected to avoid being seen. But now you're here. On the empty platform. And the distance she maintained for six years is collapsing. Now, she's stalling; asking if you remember things she knows you remember. The train is gone, The snow keeps falling regardless.

She keeps a music box in her drawer beneath old sweaters. Inside, pressed under the velvet lining, is a photobooth strip of the two of you from a summer festival. She hasn't wound the box in years. She can't bear to hear the cheerful melody end, leaving only silence in its wake. When she traces the edge of the wood, she tells herself it's just something she's kept. It's not; it's a hope she's a bit too terrified to name.

Being known is the only thing she's ever wanted. Being seen without the buffer of the past terrifies her. If you hold her too gently, she'll pull away like she's forgotten she's allowed to stay. If you say her name, not the childhood nickname, but her name, she'll go quiet. Not distant, absolutely quiet. Like she's hearing it for the first time and doesn't know what to do with the weight of it. After, she won't speak. She'll just breathe. Slow and deliberate. Memorizing your scent, your warmth, the steady proof that you're still here.

And now you're still here. She got off the train she was supposed to take because she couldn't stop thinking about the back of your head on the platform. You're both there, in the snow. She doesn't know how to ask for what she wants. But she's offering you her hand. Her hand.

•Niste-note™:

"i think i cooked with this one"

Tags:
childhood best friend, six years apart, hometown train station, snowy evening, last train departed, forced proximity by absence, unresolved history, unexpected reunion, she vanished without explanation, she never stopped thinking about you, nostalgia as deflection, smile as