Chapter Text
You'd see Sana sitting atop one of the school's many picnic tables, eyes slightly hooded, lips slightly pulled up, gazing into the eyes of her boyfriend. He's the class comedian - the one who'd break out the slapstick humour when situations would get a little too serious, but who was now strumming a guitar, looking up into the eyes of the most perfect girl he'd ever had the privilege of meeting.
Sana's friends would gather around with arms folded, heads tilted to the side, with confusion, disbelief, amusement and a plethora of other mixed emotions running through their minds. Being quite the softie herself, Sana would try to shoo her friends away from the scene, her boy's fingers now stumbling on chords and messing up tabs like the first time he'd tried to serenade her.
Other guys in the schoolyard would take note of how the sunlight would illuminate the pale smoothness of Sana's skin, how the uniform was fit to her every curve, or how they'd die for a chance to be at the receiving end of that look she gives him. The girls in Sana's squad groans at how much of a dork the guy is, what perverts the other guys in their year were, but concludes that maybe Sana's picked the right one, considering that he's, realistically speaking, the closest thing their school has to a charming romantic.
You'd see the light pinkish hues of the sky darken to a deep shade of crimson, a visual representation of how far the boy's falling for the Japanese girl before him. His fingers barely strike the steel strings of the acoustic guitar, his chords which he'd forced himself to memorise over the course of three months fade into one thought and one thought only: Sana. Sana looks beautiful. Sana looks gorgeous against a warm backdrop and boy does he want to catch her bubblegum-tinted lips in a kiss.
Sana's never kissed him though.
Then, you'd see Sana hop off the top of the picnic table as soon as she sees the analog clock near the cafeteria hit 16:00:25, slinging a strap of her bag (which was in the shape of Hello Kitty, mind you) over her shoulder in the process. She rewards her boyfriend, now showing the least subtle signs of disappointment in his boyish features, with a quick pat on the head and gives a long, torso-crushing hug to each of her six incredulous friends. A too-eager "Bye!" later and Sana's sliding her phone out of her skirt's sole pocket, a pep in her step as she's exiting the school compound.
She finds herself, alone, standing by a manmade pond in the corner of the park at the edge of her neighbourhood. With fingertips which were just a while ago unwavering and steady, the girl who now feels suffocated by the collars of both her blouse and blazer hesitantly taps a specific set of numbers and hits the "Call" button two silent beats later.
Sana's breath hitches and she feels her knees buckle a bit at the familiar, pseudo-calming standby tune to a line she'd found on a particular website just two weeks ago. The website was baby pink, she noticed (it's her favourite colour after all), and while it looked a tad outdated, the charm of pastel rainbow flags and fuschia inverted triangles and the number to a helpline in sparkly purple lettering gave her enough hope.
That hope carried her through her first shaky conversation in shaky Korean, littered with bad grammar and vocabulary she'd translated the night before. That hope carries her now as she first anticipates the soothing words of the volunteer she half-comprehends, then rushes through, in her native Kansai dialect, something along the lines of: "…I'd like to speak to M-momo."
She's unsure if the woman on the other side of the phone call understands the rest of her sentence, but she's grateful for her catching the name she admittedly stumbled over because the line is now being transferred over to another volunteer with a long "beep".
Sana doesn't have to squint while painstakingly translating this one's words; the Japanese volunteer at the flip side of the helpline breathes a "Hello, S-chan, Momo's here for you," into the phone and the schoolgirl senses her heartbeat slow to a much more normal pace.
Resting the entirety of her body on a park bench, the girl presses the phone against her cheek with both of her freezing hands and wonders if Momo can tell how utterly safe Sana feels when she listens to her.
"Are you ready to tell me? You can just let it all out if you'd rather have a quiet companion. I'll stay with you for however long they'll let me."
You'd see the guilt quickly appear on Sana's face as she plays flashbacks of the 20, 30, 40-minute long sessions where she'd just clutch onto the hard exterior of the same bench, crying, sobbing, heaving, wordlessly, into her phone's microphone. Relives, at least for a moment, how her heart had felt especially heavy with a burden she's held locked for, what, four years?
Still, she currently has memories of Momo's gentle "it's alright"s, "it will get better"s and "there's nothing wrong with you"s kept, stored carefully in a separate box within the confines of her otherwise messy head. Sana may have barely heard the cheerful helpline volunteer speak much over the past four phonecalls, but it's the security in her voice, the sense of familiarity in her intonation, the sparse but much needed sentiments in between Sana's own gasps for air, that urges Sana to trust whoever "Momo" is.
"I'm ready, Momo. I think I'm finally ready to talk about this."