My Love Forevermore

Hie morning started the way every morning had started since spring: with Yuri already there.

I saw her from half a block away, pink hair bright against the gray school gate, standing in the exact spot she always stood, at the exact angle she always stood at.

Like someone had marked the pavement with chalk and told her feet where to go.

She wasn't on her phone. She never was, in the mornings. She just stood there and watched the street, and when I came around the corner her whole face changed.

Like someone turning on a light.

"Ren!"

She ran the last few steps to me — she always ran the last few steps, no matter how early I was, no matter how long she'd been waiting — and fell into step beside me like we'd choreographed it.

Maybe we had.

"You look tired. Did you stay up late again?"

"I was fine," I said, which was a lie. I'd been up until two playing games, and my eyes felt like sandpaper.

"You were up until two." She said it lightly, swinging her school bag, not looking at me. "You always get that crease right here when you don't sleep."

She tapped the corner of her own eye.

I hadn't told her when I went to bed.

That was the thing I kept circling back to, in the weeks after. Not the big things — the big things came later, and by then I understood the small things had been the warning.

It was the little knowings. The crease by my eye. The tamagoyaki sweet instead of salty, though I'd never said which I preferred. The way she knew I'd had a bad fourth period before I'd opened my mouth.

Little knowings, piling up like snow, until one day I looked down and realized I was buried.

But that morning I just laughed, because what else do you do when your girlfriend notices you.

"Are you watching me sleep now?"

"Only in my dreams," she said, and grinned, and it was so quick and so normal that the cold feeling in my stomach didn't have time to become a thought.

We walked through the gate together. The courtyard was doing its morning thing — first-years sprinting for the doors, the baseball team already loud on the far field, someone's alarm going off in the bike shed because they'd forgotten the combination again.

Normal. Everything was normal. I kept telling myself that, the way you keep pressing on a bruise to check if it still hurts.

Yoshida caught up with us at the shoe lockers, crashing into my shoulder the way he always did, all elbows and energy.

"Ren! You look like death. Tell me you at least won."

"Lost," I said. "To a twelve-year-old. He teabagged my corpse."

"Brutal."

Yoshida turned to Yuri with the grin he always wore around her, the one I'd started to notice was a little too fixed, a little too careful.

"Morning, Yuri. Bento duty today as well?"

"Every day," she said, sweet as anything.

But her eyes went flat for half a second — just half a second — the way a pond goes flat when the wind stops.

"Ren needs his strength."

Yoshida's grin didn't move, but something behind it stepped back. I'd known Yoshida since middle school. I knew every version of his face.

That was a new one.

"Dude," he said to me, quieter, as Yuri bent to change her shoes, "can I talk to you later? At lunch or—"

"She eats with me at lunch," I said. It came out automatic.

It was true — she ate with me every day, on the roof, the two of us, and I'd stopped even thinking of it as a choice.

"Yeah. Yeah, I know."

Yoshida straightened up, and the grin came back, but the new face was still there underneath it, like a second layer.

"After school, then. Walk home together, like old times."

"Like old times," I agreed, and felt Yuri's hand slip into mine, and her fingers were cold.

It was a warm October morning. Her fingers were cold.

She walked me to my classroom — she always walked me to my classroom, even though hers was in the opposite direction and it made her late twice a week — and at the door she stood on her toes and straightened my tie.

Nobody wore their tie right. It was a point of pride. But Yuri straightened mine every morning, her fingers neat and quick, and I stood there and let her, because it was easier than the look on her face when I did it myself.

"Have a good morning," she said.

"You too."

"Think about me."

It wasn't a joke. Her eyes were huge and serious, and her thumb brushed my cheek once, and then she was gone down the hallway, pink hair swinging.

And I stood in the classroom doorway with my tie perfect and my stomach doing something I didn't have a name for.

Third period was biology, and that was where I saw the other side of her — the one nobody else seemed to notice.

Yuri sat two rows over with her lab partner, a loud guy named Daiki who treated every class like a performance. That day we were looking at onion cells under the microscopes, and Daiki kept nudging her, trying to get her to laugh, leaning so far into her space that their shoulders touched.

She laughed. She was good at laughing — the sound was bright and real, and Daiki glowed like he'd won something.

But I was watching her hands.

Under the desk, out of sight, her left hand was clenched so tight the knuckles had gone white. She kept laughing.

The hand stayed a fist.

After class I caught up with her in the hallway.

"You okay?"

"Perfect," she said, and her smile was the sunrise one. "Daiki's funny."

"He was kind of all over you."

The smile didn't move, but something in her eyes went very quiet.

"He's my lab partner, Ren. That's all."

She took my hand — hers was warm this time, which somehow felt worse, like the cold had been honest — and squeezed.

"You're the only one. You know that. Forevermore."

"Forevermore," I said, because what else do you do.

She leaned in and kissed my cheek, quick, in the middle of the crowded hallway, and three girls from her class made the sound girls make.

And Daiki walked past us laughing with his friends, and I watched Yuri watch him go.

Just for a second. Just long enough.

Her hand was still a fist.

"Your girlfriend's intense, man."

This was from Sato, who sat behind me and had the social survival instincts of a brick.

"Like, in a good way. Probably."

I sat down. I didn't answer.

The confession had been in spring, under the cherry trees behind the gym. I remembered it the way you remember things that happen to someone else — in pieces, too bright, with the sound slightly wrong.

Petals coming down. Her hands shaking. Her voice shaking worse.

"I've liked you for a really long time, Ren. Since before — a long time. Would you — I mean, if you wanted —"

And I'd said yes, because her smile when I said it did something to my chest I didn't have a word for, and because she was beautiful, and because some animal part of my brain understood before the rest of me did that saying no was not an available option.

Since before — a long time. I'd thought about that sentence more than once.

Since before what?

First period was English. I spent it watching the clock and trying not to think about the crease by my eye.

Second period was history, and I spent it trying not to think about the tamagoyaki.

Between classes I'd given up trying not to think and was just sitting there letting the thoughts come, the way you let water come through a crack you're too tired to plug.

She knew things. That was the simple version.

She knew things I hadn't told her — small things, stupid things, the kind of things that shouldn't matter. What time I went to bed. Which way I liked my tamagoyaki. That I'd had a bad fourth period before fourth period had even ended.

She was always waiting — at the gate, at the shoe lockers, outside my classroom — and I'd started doing the math on it without meaning to.

To be at the gate when I arrived, she had to leave her house forty minutes early. To be at the shoe lockers, she had to skip the courtyard. To walk me to class and still make it to hers, she had to run.

She ran. Every day. For me.

It should have felt like love. Some days it did.

Some days I caught myself thinking about the bento — the perfect little onigiri faces, the carrot flowers, the tomato placed exactly in the center like a jewel — and I felt like the luckiest guy in school.

And the guilt came right after, hot and immediate, because what kind of person felt afraid of a homemade lunch?

Fourth period was math, and I was terrible at math, and for fifty minutes I didn't think about anything except numbers refusing to behave.

It was a relief.

Then the bell rang, and I went to the bathroom, and then to fifth period, and it was there, sitting down at my desk, that I remembered: Yuri had asked about fourth period.

At lunch. Which hadn't happened yet.

No. Wait. She'd asked yesterday. Yesterday at lunch, she'd asked if fourth period had been bad.

And I'd said — what had I said? I couldn't remember. The days were blurring together, every lunch on the roof, every bento, every "is it good?" and "it's amazing, Yuri," and I sat there in fifth period trying to separate yesterday from the day before and feeling like I was trying to pick up water.

Lunch. The roof. The wind doing the October thing, pulling at her hair, the cherry trees throwing shadows across the concrete.

She was already there when I arrived — she was always there first, which meant she ran up four flights of stairs with the bento held perfectly level so nothing spilled — and her face did the light-turning-on thing.

And for a second I felt the chest thing, the wordless thing, and I hated myself for what came after.

"Ren!" She held the bento up over her head like a trophy. "I tried the tamagoyaki the way you like it today! Sweet, not salty!"

I'd never told her I preferred it sweet.

There it was. The little knowing, bright and sharp as a fishhook.

I looked at the bento — the onigiri faces, the carrot flowers, the tomato like a jewel, steam still coming off the rice because she'd gotten up in the dark to make it — and I thought about the crease by my eye, and fourth period, and the shoe locker spot marked in chalk, and Yoshida's new face.

"You didn't have to," I said. It was what I always said.

"I wanted to." It was what she always said.

Her smile didn't move. It was a perfect smile, the kind she'd practiced in a mirror, I was suddenly sure, because nobody's smile was that symmetrical by accident.

"Eat. It's getting cold."

We ate. She watched me eat — she always watched, chin in her hands, eyes huge — and I ate, because what else do you do, and the tamagoyaki was sweet, and it was perfect, and I didn't know how she knew.

"Yoshida wants to walk home with me after school," I said. "Like old times."

The chopsticks in her hand stopped. Just for a second.

Then they kept going, picking up a piece of tamagoyaki, placing it on my rice.

"That's nice," she said. "You haven't done that in a while."

"Since spring," I said.

Since you, I didn't say.

"Mm." She smiled at the bento, not at me. "Don't stay out too late. I'll worry."

It sounded like love. It sounded exactly like love.

So why did my hands shake?

After school, Yoshida was waiting at the gate — not Yuri's spot, the other side, like he'd deliberately chosen the opposite pavement.

He fell into step beside me, and for the first block neither of us said anything, and the silence was the old kind, the comfortable kind, the kind we'd had since middle school.

I waited for it to feel normal. It didn't.

"So," Yoshida said finally. "Yuri."

"What about her?"

"Dude."

He stopped walking. Just stopped, in the middle of the sidewalk, and turned to face me.

"I'm going to say this once, because you're my best friend and somebody has to. Break up with that psycho girlfriend of yours."

The words landed like something dropped from a height.

I stared at him. Behind him, the sun was going down orange over the rooftops, and a crow was making that ugly crow sound, and I thought about the tamagoyaki, sweet not salty, and the crease by my eye.

"She's not—" I started.

"She is, Ren. She's —"

He ran a hand through his hair, and he looked scared, and Yoshida was never scared.

"Do you know she was outside our math classroom yesterday? Just standing there. Staring through the door window. For like ten minutes. And last week I saw her at the station by your house. Your station, dude. She doesn't live near you. What's she doing at your station?"

"She was probably—"

I didn't finish. I didn't have an ending for the sentence.

"I'm serious. There's something wrong with her. The way she looks at you — it's not normal. It's like you're a thing. Like you're hers."

He grabbed my shoulder.

"Just — think about it. Okay? Promise me you'll think about it."

I promised. We walked the rest of the way home in silence, and the silence wasn't the old kind anymore.

On the way home I took the long route, past the convenience store, because I didn't want to go home yet.

Behind the school, by the incinerator where nobody went, I heard voices — one of them Yuri's, but wrong. Flat. Cold. Nothing like the sunrise.

I stopped. I shouldn't have stopped, but I did.

"You said Thursday," Yuri was saying. "It's Tuesday."

"I know, I know." The other voice was a girl's, thin and fraying at the edges. "I just needed — come on, Yuri, you know how it is."

"I know how it is. That's why I said Thursday." A pause. "You're shaking. When did you last eat?"

"Don't — don't do the caring thing. Just — do you have it or not?"

Another pause, longer. Then Yuri laughed — not the bright laugh, not the sunrise laugh, something short and private.

"No one cares about you, you know. Not like this. Remember that."

"I remember."

I heard footsteps, and I moved before I could think, around the corner of the vending machines, my heart going like a drum.

The girl came out first — older than us, maybe twenty, thin arms, track marks I could see even from where I was hiding, though I told myself I was imagining that part.

She didn't look at me. She walked fast, head down, like the ground owed her money.

Then Yuri came out. And her face — God. Her face was empty.

Not sad, not angry, just blank, like a room with the lights off.

She saw me before I could move, and the blankness cracked, and the sunrise came up so fast it was violent.

"Ren!" She ran to me, hands warm now, eyes shining. "What are you doing here?"

"I was — convenience store." It sounded like a lie because it was one. "Who was that?"

"Just an old friend." She linked her arm through mine, leaned her head against my shoulder. Strawberry smell. "Nobody important. Nobody at all."

But I'd heard her voice behind the incinerator. Flat and cold.

And I'd heard what she said: No one cares about you. Not like this.

She hummed the whole way to the station. I didn't ask what "it" was.

I didn't want to know.

That night I lay in bed and thought about the pinky promise. About her head on my shoulder. About "forevermore, okay?"

About the tomato placed exactly in the center like a jewel, and the chalk-mark spot at the shoe lockers, and the forty minutes early, and the running, every day, for me.

My phone buzzed. A text from Yuri: "Did you have fun with Yoshida? I missed you."

It was 11:47 PM. I'd gotten home at six. She'd waited almost six hours to text that — or she'd been typing and deleting for six hours, which was worse.

I stared at the screen until it went dark.

Another buzz. "Goodnight, Ren. Dream of me. I dream of you every night."

I turned the phone face-down. I lay in the dark.

And I thought about Yoshida's face — the new face, the scared face — and I thought about the word psycho, and I thought about the smile like sunrise, and I didn't sleep until very late.

And when I did I dreamed of pink hair and cold fingers, and I woke up with the sheets twisted around my legs like something had been holding me down.

The next morning, she was at the gate. Same spot. Same angle.

The light turned on in her face when she saw me.

"Ren!" She ran the last few steps, fell into step beside me. "Did you sleep well?"

"Fine," I lied.

"You look tired." She tapped the corner of her own eye. "That crease."

We walked through the gate. The courtyard did its morning thing.

At the shoe lockers, she bent to change her shoes, and I stood there looking down at the top of her head — the pink hair, the neat part — and I thought about the door window of the math classroom, and a face staring through it for ten minutes, and my stomach did the thing it had been doing for weeks.

She looked up. She smiled. The sunrise smile, perfect and symmetrical and practiced.

"Think about me today," she said.

And I did. All day. I couldn't stop.

I thought about her in English, diagramming sentences I didn't care about, and I thought about the fist under the desk in biology, and I thought about the flat cold voice behind the incinerator saying "no one cares about you," and I thought about Yoshida's scared face in the orange sunset saying "break up with that psycho girlfriend of yours."

I thought about the tamagoyaki, sweet not salty, and the crease by my eye, and the forty minutes early, and the running.

At lunch she was already on the roof, bento held up like a trophy, face doing the light thing.

I climbed the stairs thinking about how many stairs there were — four flights — and how she ran them every day with the bento held perfectly level, and how much practice that must have taken, and how many mornings.

"Ren!" The bento. The sunrise. The tomato like a jewel.

I sat down. I ate. She watched, chin in her hands, eyes huge and shining, and I was the only thing in the world worth looking at.

And I had never been so afraid of being looked at in my life.

"Is it good?" she asked.

"It's amazing, Yuri."

It was. That was the worst part. It was always amazing.