"You have always been so nice to me....to everyone..." [Y/N] murmured. "Even when I treated you so horribly." Her eyes poke out from her arms and she stared at him. She looked at him filled with sadness and pain. Pain because the past of her whole entire existence still hung on her. Sadness because of how she took life to be. The words that Hitoshi advised her were finally ringing against her ears.

"You want to know a secret?" he asked her quietly. She didn't nod or shake her head, so he continued. "I honestly don't care about everyone, though yes, I am still nice to them. They all seem so fake, which seems so pointless; the popular acts how society wants them to be and not what they want to be and the unpopular kids does the exact same. But for you...you don't care what others think of you. You are strong and you do your own thing, not what someone else tells you to do. It's what got me interested in you. So....you're the only person I'm truly happy to be around by."

Unexpectedly, warmth seeped through into her heart and a blush formed onto her cheeks. Nothing like this ever happened to her and it froze her on the spot. It was a feeling she never felt before, but she guessed she never felt it because only just now did she allow to have emotions. "I-I...u-uh am very thankful for those words, b-but I'm sure it's not true," she responded.

He laughed and she looked at him in bewilderment. "This is honestly such an amazing moment, to see you stutter. I never would've thought!" he chuckled some more, his song-like laughter filling the entire closet. A flush of embarrassment surged through her and she slightly frowned. His face went back to all seriousness. "Anyway, it is true. It is true and you need to know it."

She gulped at those words and the intense feeling of his brown eyes staring at her. "I would like to apologize to you for acting so rude to you—"

"No. You don't have to apologize for this," he interrupted. "I understand that you must've been through many hard things and that you only wanted to protect yourself. But please, I really do hope you open yourself even more to the world. The world wants you to be happy and so do I. We need more reallness within all the fakeness and that reallness is you."

She sighed. "I'm not sure how to start over....with the world or with you."

He raised his eyebrows at her and gave her an assured smile. "You already had." She scrunched up her face in confusion as he gestured his hands at her. "Just look at you. You had expressed so much more emotions today and yesterday than you ever had before. You're already doing so great. And I'll be supporting you the whole time as I wait patiently to see you in a place where you belong. In happiness."

"Thank you so much," she whispered. Another tear fell from her eyes and slid down her cheek. Hitoshi looked at her in a way a kid looked at his first present. He held out his arms wide and his eyes asked her a question. She registered it easily and nodded. He grinned wide before wrapping his arms around her gently. Her heart skipped a beat in the comfort of his arms and she knew she should try her best to start over, so she hugged him back.

She could hear a small gasp in Hitoshi's breath as if it took him in surprised. But he gained his composure again and asked her one final question. "Friends?"

She took a deep breath and smelled a familiar scent from Hitoshi's body. It was the same scent from the same shampoo she used. Her favorite shampoo....and he used it as well. That was right. She already knew about it since Target. She brushed those thoughts away.

"Friends," she confirmed.