𝐧𝐮𝐦𝐛𝐞𝐫 𝐛𝐮𝐝𝐝𝐲 || 𝐭. 𝐤𝐚𝐠𝐞𝐲𝐚𝐦𝐚

⤷𝟘𝟙: 𝕒 𝕟𝕖𝕨 𝕔𝕙𝕒𝕡𝕥𝕖𝕣

"who is she?"

"who?"

"that girl over there."

"i've never seen her around here—do you think she'll be in our class?"

"i don't know. ...but she's stunning."

"go ask for her number."

"why do i have to do it? you do it."

"look at her."

ignoring the chain of whispered voices that seemed to follow you wherever you went, you walked into the campus of kyoto university.

finally.

you were here.

after a whole year, you were back.

not only back to the university you had visited with your friends over a year ago, but back to japan.

at the end of high school, you had decided that you needed a year to figure some things out, and when you were accepted to an exchange to korea, you had no idea that it would be the healing that you needed.

seoul was beautiful.

and you only applied to the exchange on a whim—you never expected to get in.

nor did you you ever expected the whole experience to finally make everything in your life 'right' again.

or as 'right' as it could be.

two years.

it's been two fucking years.

and it had taken you a full year to get over everything. to fully erase everything from the past.

but now, not only have you healed, you've also found a new confidence and self love.

it really is unfortunate that took a long ass time to get to this point.

the first year after the entire catastrophe with your old 'friend'—whose name you blocked out, fyi—was upmost hell and depression.

you were broken. for almost the full year.

nothing seemed to make you happy anymore. nothing ever made you feel anything.

nothing ever meant anything.

your only distractions were your studies.

...which you were fine with.

you always had high goals academically, and you focused every single second of your time on writing the perfect college essay, during your whole 'broken' period.

and hard work really does pay off.

you had gotten into all the prestigious schools you aimed for. tokyo, hyogo, osaka, nagoya, wasenda, tohoku—not one single rejection.

maybe it was because god decided that you've had all the rejection that you deserved in your life already.

if so, then you were thankful for everything that happened two years ago. it had taught you two main life lessons: one, men ain't shit; and two, future > past.

but even as you got your acceptances, scholarships, honour rolls, and countless awards, you still felt empty.

it was getting harder to hide the fact that you were probably severely depressed despite your academic successes.

and your friends definitely noticed.

you'd never agree to hangout, or do anything other than stay in your room and study.