Nagi Seishiro..✨

You and Nagi had always been very close—so close, in fact, that people used to joke that you were like stamps and letters: always close together. You grew up together, the seasons changing around you, time weaving you into a pattern that seemed natural. Natural. Safe.

It was sometime during the soft haze of your teenage years, when the days lengthened and the air began to taste of possibilities, that something inside you shifted. A warmth began to quietly blossom in your chest whenever Nagi laughed at your jokes or leaned too close during late-night conversations. You told yourself it was nothing. Just the comfort of familiarity, maybe. But the truth settled in silently, insistently: you were falling in love with your best friend.

Still, you kept it to yourself. You kept it to yourself. Because confessing it meant risking everything. And what you had with Nagi felt too precious, too fragile to risk. So you wrapped those feelings in silence, hid them behind every shared smile and every "see you tomorrow."

Then, one day—an ordinary afternoon, the sky clear and calm—Nagi sat next to you, your knees touching as usual. He didn't even look up from the glowing handheld console in his palms as he spoke.

"Hey, Alexis... I think I like your best friend. Would you mind introducing me?"

The words hit you not like a thunderclap, but like the gentle, devastating shattering of something once whole. A tiny crack, invisible at first, that pierced the silent hopes you had so carefully cultivated. You didn't even know they had been taking root until they began to wither.

Ah, so this was it.

Beneath the delicate petals of your spring, something silently broke. And all you could do was sit there, beside her, as always, smiling as if your world hadn't moved an inch out of reach.