Two years. That number felt like a heavy, cold weight pressed against her chest, but to look at Yui Hanamura, one would never know.
She stepped into high school with the spring, an almost blinding vision in the standard sailor uniform. Everything about her was flawless: the perfectly ironed pleats of her skirt, the careful, dark-blue ribbon that matched the twilight sea, and her long hair, which moved with the quiet grace of a forgotten wave. She wasn't merely pretty; she possessed the fragile, untouchable beauty of a glass sculpture.
They didn't hesitate to name her. The Silent Princess.
The silence wasn't born of shyness, but of finality. Her expression was a polite, distant mask—the kind of look reserved for strangers you never intended to see again. Her eyes, large and deep, held no emotion other than a careful, deep-sea void. They made boys tremble with infatuation, recognizing her as the most popular girl in class, but no one dared approach.
She is waiting for someone. That was the unspoken consensus, and it was absolutely correct.
Yui lived by a schedule designed to keep the past alive. Every morning, she traced the exact footsteps Jun used to take to school, as if walking the same path could somehow narrow the two-year gap between them.
In the classroom, she always claimed the seat by the window in the back corner. From there, she could stare out at the distant coast. The ocean, which had stolen Jun, was now her daily punishment and her constant, mocking hope.
During lunch, the boys, fueled by reckless adolescence, would try. "Hanamura-san, want to join us?"
She would look up, offer a short, precise, and entirely cold, "No, thank you," and return to her bento. Her mother always packed the grilled fish Jun used to tease her for liking. She chewed slowly, tasting the salt and listening to the silence. Jun would have laughed at that boy's hair. Jun would have stolen one of my tamagoyaki rolls.
She wasn't eighteen and ready for the future; she was perpetually fifteen, anchored to a promise.
The Unworn Gift
In the quiet moment between classes, when the hallway chatter was at its loudest, Yui would pull her left wrist slightly out from the cuff of her immaculate uniform.
There were two simple, braided threads—one blue, one pale green—tucked into the zippered pocket of her backpack. They were simple, handmade friendship bracelets. The blue one was hers, the one she made for Jun. The green one was his, which she had prepared for him to give to her. They were meant to be exchanged on his fifteenth birthday, two years ago.
Yui wore the green bracelet, Jun's gift, loosely around her left wrist.
She never wore the blue one, the one that was supposed to be his.
The other half is incomplete. The bare skin next to the green bracelet screamed of absence. To wear the blue bracelet herself would be an act of substitution, of admitting the bond was now only a memory she carried alone.
She would only wear the blue bracelet when Jun returned and placed it on her wrist himself. Until then, the empty space was the missing half of their promise—a piece of time that remained unfinished until his return.
The Coin of the Unspent Future
After the final bell, Yui was often the last student to leave the room. The silence that fell after the rush of escaping students was the deepest peace she knew.
She would approach the back corner window and gently pull her ten-yen coin from her pocket. This wasn't just any coin; it was the "the promise of their future" that Jun had dropped into her palm on her thirteenth birthday, insisting it was the first deposit into their shared savings account for their life together.
The coin felt smooth and heavy, an unspent piece of a life that was supposed to have happened. She would hold its cool metal against the window glass, looking out at the distant, desolate gray of the sea.
Her focus was absolute. She pressed the coin hard against the glass, letting the warmth of her palm transfer to the cold metal. This was her daily broadcast. She poured every ounce of her silent, denied grief and her fierce, unbroken love into that coin, making the unspent future a singular, unwavering vow carried by the sea: I know you're out there. I know you're fighting to get back.
Her hope was a lighthouse beam, singular and burning, straining against the vast gray expanse that had swallowed him.
And on this particular day, the heavy, thick mist that rolled in from the sea was colder, heavier, and closer than it had ever been. It coated the glass in a pearl-white film, hiding the horizon completely.
Just endure this silence a little longer, Yui. Her heart whispered the mantra, clutching the coin until the ridges dug into her palm. You'll be home soon, Jun.