nostalgia

a glimpse

It has been months since you told your parents about your plan to come back to Namimori; They didn't really mind though, and thought that they could use that chance to let you experience living alone by yourself. You have your aunt who lives in the neighborhood as well so you have a guardian while they spend more time in the current place they were living in.

Born and raised in Namimori, you decided to come back there because of your old friends, and you've been in touch with one of them. It has been years since you've last seen your hometown and now that you just finished middle school, you thought it was the best time to move back and resume your studies here as a first year in Namimori highschool.

You just arrived an hour ago and your aunt welcomed you back, hugging you tightly before her children went to help you with your luggage. They are older than you and attend the university near Namimori. After thanking them for help, you started looking around the house.

It felt very nostalgic to look at; Everything was not moved ever since, and it seemed like your aunt would come by sometimes to clean the house since there were no speck of dust when you looked at the reflection of the glass in the picture frames.

Your feet brought you to the kitchen, gaze landing on the door of the refrigerator and saw a paper that was plastered on it with a magnet. The contents of the paper made you smile; It was an old drawing of you and your two friends drawn in various colors of crayons. The art style definitely aged well with the stick-figure and some smiley face drawn on the face. You lifted up your hand to touch the paper, feeling its crisp surface as your hand ran along the rough strokes of crayons.

You could still remember the day you did this with your close friend, Kyoko, who drew this along with you. It was a summer day when the two of you were playing on your veranda, crayons scattered on the wooden platform as the two of you excitedly picked up your favorite colors to draw one another. It was her who drew the third figure, her brother, after drawing you in the middle. The memory made you smile ー it really did feel nostalgic.

Ever since your family moved to your province to take care of your sickly grandparents, you started sending letters to Kyoko. After getting your first phone two years ago, you asked for her number in one of your letters and contacted her with it ever since.

Kyoko would always send you pictures of herself, the cakes she was eating, or her brother sometimes. You would also do the same, sometimes even calling her through video calls but every time you do, it seems like her brother was not at home so it was quite disappointing for you. You haven't told her yet that you were moving back to Namimori, thinking it would be great to surprise both of them.

After tidying up your room, you changed your clothes into a much more comfortable one and took your keys. You decided to go out, locking the door and went on your way to the nearest convenience store. Looking around the neighborhood, most of the houses here haven't changed from what you remember.

You also passed by the playground you used to go to with Kyoko and her brother just to play around before it gets dark. You also passed by Kyoko's house, seeing her window open and saw her pass by, which made you quickly ー and quietly ー run away, desperately hoping that she didn't see you.

While running with your eyes closed, you unexpectedly bumped into someone. Feeling the pain in your head, you held your forehead as an attempt to soothe the pain away. The person in front of you spoke with a rough voice, "Are you okay?" judging by the voice, it belonged to a guy.

You opened your eyes, the pain still stings and looked up to see the person you bumped to. Your eyes widened in surprise; Seeing that familiar scar on the person's eyebrow, he held a confused and worried expression in his face as he waited for you to respond.

You could feel your mouth gaped from surprise but shook your thoughts away from your mind and spoke, "I-I'm so sorry," you began, "I didn't mean to bump on you." You clearly didn't plan on bumping into Sasagawa Ryohei.

Your plans shattered in your mind, as the chance disappeared from your grasp as you watched him flash a smile at you, "Nah, don't worry about it!" he cheerfully said before he paused, raising his eyebrow as he looked at you in wonder, "It's the first time I saw you around here." no, you didn't  "Did you just move here?"

Ryohei felt that there was more than that, but didn't heed any mind on it. Although seeing you in front of him felt familiar, he didn't know who you were.

It was great that he didn't know it was you. Relief washed over your body, "Yes, I just did today." you smiled at him.

"That's extremely great!" his favorite adjective still hasn't changed, "I'm Sasagawa Ryohei, nice to meet you!"

Your face brightened, it felt funny hearing him introduce himself to you for the second time. This time, you decided to make up something just to avoid telling him your name. "Nice to meet you, Sasagawa!" you said before looking at your watch, "Oh, no!" you let out dramatically and the man in front of you tensed his shoulders unconsciously, "I-I have to go!"

"Ah, then I won't hold you back anymore." Ryohei answered and watched you pass by him, you turned your body to his direction and said, "See you tomorrow, Ryohei!"

It caught him off guard when you called him by his first name; The way his name rolled off your tongue really did feel familiar after all, and you called him by his surname first before switching to his first name. Hearing the tone in your voice as you said his name was so nostalgic yet new at the same time. "Tomorrow?" he wondered as he stood still in his place, "Oh, right, there's school tomorrow."

Ryohei heard a voice call out to him which made him turn to the direction of the voice and saw his younger sister, Kyoko peek on their gate. "Nii-chan! We'll be having dinner soon!"

"Coming!" Ryohei jogged towards Kyoko as his younger sister opened the gate for him. He thanked her and Kyoko followed right after him. "There's a new girl around here." he said while adjusting the bandages that were wrapped around his hands.

Kyoko beamed at him in excitement, "Really? Have you talked to her?" she asked. Ryohei nodded in response, "Yeah, but she was in a hurry before I could ask for her name."

"Ah, what a shame." Kyoko let out, "..but it's okay! Seems like we'll meet her tomorrow at school."

Kyoko cheered from what she heard from her older brother and went ahead first to their dining room. Ryohei only smiled at the scene and your voice played in his mind repeatedly. Everything about you was nostalgic; By how your (eye color) orbs would look up to him, or how your hair swayed in the air while the tresses of your (hair color) hair fell on your shoulders.

Ryohei shrugged off the thought ー he'll just look for you tomorrow at school.