I didn't think anything of it at first.
Just a brief, passing moment, a conversation under festival lights, near the juice stand where lanterns swung lazily above our heads. One of Aoi's classmates approached. Yuna, I think her name was. Bright eyes. Nervous smile. The kind of girl who always seemed to be in the middle of a conversation, even when no one else was speaking.
"Are you Aoi's brother?" she asked, glancing up at me like she already knew the answer.
"Unfortunately," I replied with a half-smile. "Got roped into painting the backdrops."
She laughed, covering her mouth with her fingers. "You don't look that much older. I was expecting someone more... I don't know, plain?"
"Thanks," I said, scratching the back of my neck. "I guess."
Her laughter came easily. Familiar. Flirtatious, even. And I laughed too, not because it was funny, but because it felt like the polite thing to do.
But then... I felt it.
That sudden, unmistakable prickle. A silence in the noise. The kind of feeling you get when the air shifts when someone's gaze finds you before you find them.
I turned.
And there she was.
Aoi stood just a few meters away, a tray of yakisoba in each hand. Her posture was still, unnaturally so. Her eyes were locked on mine. No smile. No blink. Just… watching.
And then, without a word, she turned her back and walked away.
---
I caught up to her behind the school building, far from the clamor of game booths and laughter, in a corner lit only by the fading blush of sunset.
"Aoi," I said gently, my fingers brushing her shoulder.
She stiffened.
"Oh," she said, her voice stripped of warmth. "You done flirting?"
The words landed with a sting I wasn't prepared for.
"What? That wasn't...." I stopped myself. "We were just talking."
"I saw," she said, eyes not meeting mine. She held out the tray of yakisoba like a transaction. "Yuna's nice. She talks a lot."
I frowned. "Are you… mad?"
"No." Too quick. Too sharp. "Why would I be?"
"You just left."
"I didn't want to interrupt."
There was something heavy in her tone. Not anger, not exactly. Something colder. Sadder. A hollow, careful distance, like someone trying to stay afloat in deep water by pretending they weren't sinking.
"I wasn't flirting," I said, quieter now. "I didn't mean anything by it."
She gave a tiny nod, more to herself than to me. Her eyes stayed on the gravel at our feet, like she couldn't risk looking higher.
And then, she whispered, almost to the air between us:
"It's just… weird, that's all."
"What is?"
"You. Smiling like that. With someone else. Like you were never gone."
She lifted her gaze, and for the first time that evening, I saw it. The rawness in her eyes. The way her lips pressed together to keep something else from spilling out.
Like it mattered to her. Too much.
Like it hurt.
I wanted to ask why. Why it shook her like this. Why it sounded like I'd broken something fragile between us without realizing. Why she looked at me like I had belonged to her once and somehow slipped away.
But I couldn't speak.
Because in that moment, her silence said everything.
And all the music, the fireworks, the distant laughter... none of it reached us.
Only the space between us did.
And the ache I couldn't name tightening in my chest.