KREEZO

Aika Misora never planned to fall in love. Not with the boy who sat alone on rooftops, or the one who pressed flowers instead of speaking his pain. But some stories don’t wait to be written — they bloom in silence, in shared glances, in the weight of unsaid things.

After her mother’s quiet abandonment, Aika survives high school by keeping her heart zipped shut. Her world is routine: library lunches, hushed notebooks, and pretending everything’s fine. Until she meets Ren Hayashi, the quiet sketch-artist with rumors on his name and bruises in his smile.

He doesn’t talk much. But his silence says everything.

Drawn together by chance — and maybe fate — the two begin to orbit each other in secret places: the abandoned rooftop, the library’s back corner, the flower shop that smells like lost time. As seasons shift, so do they. Slowly. Tenderly. Terrifyingly.

But love, even the gentle kind, brings buried pain to the surface. And when a long-unopened letter from Aika’s mother resurfaces, the wounds between them deepen — not enough to break, but enough to test whether two broken hearts can really hold each other.

A soft, grief-tinged coming-of-age romance about first love, second chances, and what it means to stay — even when everything else leaves.

“I’ll Still Love You When We’re Old”

The cherry blossoms came early that year.

They bloomed almost overnight, cotton-pink clouds softening the edges of the school courtyard, like even the trees wanted to give the third-years a gentle goodbye.

And time was starting to feel like a secret no one wanted to say out loud.

Aika met Ren after class behind the gym — the place where stray basketballs went to die, and where awkward couples sometimes kissed when they thought no one was watching.

He wasn't sketching this time. Just sitting on the low concrete ledge, long legs stretched out, earbuds tangled in his fingers like nerves.

He looked up, blinking like he hadn't noticed time moving at all.

"Didn't want to think too much," he said.

She sat beside him, close enough to feel the press of his arm, but not touching. Not yet.

He didn't answer right away. Just dug into his bag and pulled out his sketchbook.

It was worn now — frayed at the edges, rain-warped in places. He flipped to the last page, then turned the book so she could see.

It was a picture of two people sitting on a train platform. Dusk behind them. A suitcase between their feet. The girl had her head on the boy's shoulder. The boy was looking at the sky.

"I want to go somewhere where we get to choose things," he said. "Where we're not just trying to survive school or wait for someone to come back or disappear."

There was something soft in the way he'd drawn it — not just the figures, but the space around them. Like hope was hiding in the corners.

"And where do you think we'd go?" she asked.

"You. Maybe journalism. Maybe something else. Something where your words matter."

She swallowed. "You think I matter?"

He looked at her like it was the dumbest question she'd ever asked.

"I think the world's been trying not to let you know it. And I think you still keep finding ways to say it anyway."

She didn't realize she was crying until he reached up and wiped her cheek.

Then reached into her own bag and pulled out a small, blue notebook — her journal. The one filled with scribbled moments, soft confessions, and the things she couldn't always say out loud.

He blinked, startled. "Aika, this is—"

He looked down at it like she'd handed him her heartbeat.

"So you never forget," she whispered, "who we were. Even if we change. Even if everything else does."

He just opened the cover — saw the first line, her handwriting messy and honest:

> Today I met a boy who draws flowers on rooftops.

And then he smiled. A real one. Slow. Unafraid.

Every page. Every sentence. Every piece of her she left behind.

And in his own sketchbook, beneath the train platform drawing, he wrote:

So now it's my turn to make sure we don't lose them.

Graduation Promises