"Hikari, Miyako’s here to see you."

Rolling over onto her side, Hikari ignored her mother’s knock on her door. After Takeru, Miyako was the one person she most did not want to see. She didn’t want to think about what had happened last night, let alone talk about it. All she wanted to do was stay in bed with her blankets over her head and pretend the rest of the world did not exist and last night had never happened.

Hikari buried her head into her pillow and groaned. Why did her stupid memory keep throwing up what a good kisser Takeru was? She kept coming back to the warm softness of his lips, the blue clarity of his eyes, the taste of salty popcorn, the down-softness of his hair beneath her fingers . . . She squeezed her eyes shut against the memory. She could not think about Takeru that way. He was her best friend in the whole world. She could not let herself be in love with him, although she had a feeling it was too late for that. Think about something safe. Think about Aki.

Desperately, she forced herself to summon up the boy on whom she had officially been crushing for almost two months now. She made herself remember his twilight-blue eyes; the sweep of his blond hair; his triumphant smile. He was grinning at her, as if she were the only girl in the world, as if she were the only thing he needed to be complete. Hikari relaxed, folding her arms on her stomach and letting her breathing calm. It was a mistake. The image dissolved. Suddenly, she was in Takeru’s arms and he was smiling down at her and he was bending down to . . . .

"Don’t think you’re weaseling out of this so easily, Yagami Hikari," an angry voice screeched, as the duvet was ripped off of her. Blinded by the sudden light, Hikari blinked up at a furious Miyako. Her friend’s mouth was a tight, white line of anger, and there were bright spots of crimson on both of her cheeks. Her glasses flashed in the sun. Hikari opened her mouth to protest, but Miyako cut her off by launching into a furious tirade.

"How dare you and Takeru sneak out on me like that last night and leave me all alone with Ken? I suppose you two thought it was hilarious! It wasn’t! You knew how nervous I was about this date, you knew I needed a friend, and you let me down! You had better have a very good reason for it, Hikari, or . . ." she trailed off threateningly.

"I kissed him," she said tiredly, "Now I’ve messed everything up."

Miyako’s anger seemed to evaporate in an instant. Motioning for Hikari to move over and sit up, she settled beside her on the bed and stared at her in open disbelief: "You kissed Takeru?"

Head resting on her knees, Hikari stared at her bare feet. Her toe-nails still had pink, glittery polish on them from the previous night. It seemed a very long time since Mimi had helped her get ready for her date, "Yeah."

"Was it nice?" Miyako asked curiously.

"Very," she admitted in an anguished voice, "But that makes it even worse, Miyako. He’s my best friend. I’m not supposed to be kissing him. I’m certainly not meant to be thinking about him in that way."

"Why not?" Miyako asked, twirling a strand of lavender-coloured hair around her fingers, then added in confiding tones, "My big sister says best friends make the best boyfriends, and she should know. She’s dating a boy she’s known since she was five."

Hikari sank against her pillow, "But it’s Takeru. Takaishi Takeru. . . ."

"Who is sweet, wonderful and completely gorgeous, as if you haven’t noticed," she finished, "He’s perfect boyfriend material."

"I guess," she conceded reluctantly.

"Good," she beamed, slipping her handbag off her shoulder and rummaging through it. After a few moments, she extracted a small, pink cell-phone from it and tapped a number out on it. Holding it against her ear, she flashed a bingo sign at her friend. Hikari suddenly realised in horror what the other girl intended on doing.

"Miyako! No!" she reached for the cell-phone, but Miyako stood and twirled smartly out of her reach. Hikari leapt to her feet to make another grab at it, but it was too late.

"Takeru?" her friend said brightly into her phone, "Hi! I’m at Hikari’s place and she wants to talk to you. I’ll put her on now. Bye-e!"

Still grinning, Miyako thrust the phone at her. Hikari snatched it from her hands and glared at her, hating her friend for putting her in this position. She did not know what she was going to say to him to explain her actions last night, but she knew if she refused to speak to him their relationship would be even weirder. It wasn’t like she could avoid him forever with them being in the same class. It was time to take a page from Taichi’s book and face up to the inevitable with courage.

"H-hi, Takeru," she greeted him weakly.

"Hikari," he replied, sounding almost as nervous, "Miyako said you wanted to talk?"

"I . . . ." she shifted nervously on the spot, wrapping her left leg around her right, like a flamingo. She suddenly caught sight of herself in the mirror. She was small, thin and pale; ridiculous in a pair of oversized, cow-print pyjamas. There was no way Takeru would want to go out with her. As Miyako had said, he was almost as gorgeous as he was sweet. She had seen that last night, and she knew he could have any girl at school. There was no reason why he would choose her. No, the only chance she had of staying in his life was as his friend, his childhood friend. No other girl could be that for him.

"I want to say that I’m sorry about last night. I’ve been under a lot of stress lately. . . And I guess I freaked out on you."

Sitting on her bed, Miyako made a disgusted face at her and mouthed that she was a chicken. Hikari could not disagree with her. She was a coward. She did not have the courage to follow her heart either with Aki or with Takeru. She was too afraid of being hurt. Her brother would have been ashamed of her.

"I guess I understand."

To her surprise, he sounded disappointed, like he had wanted her to say something else to him. Like he wanted me to say the kiss meant something . . .

A half-forgotten memory stirred within her. They had been sitting around her kitchen table, working on a project for school. She had glanced up from her books to ask him something, and had caught him watching her with a strange, almost painful look in his eyes. It had been the way she had seen Taichi look at Sora when he thought she did not see him. Not knowing what to think, she had flushed in confusion, and dropped her gaze back to her work. Then, Takeru had cracked one of his atrocious, homework jokes - ‘Why does a square root?’ ‘Because it wants to support its team’ - and everything had returned to normal between them. She had put the look out of her mind long ago, but it came back to her now. Was she the reason he had turned down all the other girls who had wanted to go out with him?

Hikari suddenly felt very calm. Inside herself, everything had stilled to silence, and she recognized it as the quiet that preceded action. For the first time in two days, she had no doubts about what she was going to do.

After a long pause, Takeru added with a little laugh, "Anyway, you probably mistook me for Aki in the dark."

It was a cue of sorts, and she took it.

"Actually," she said slowly, "I think I mistook Aki for you. I think I had a crush on him, because he was so much like you. It was a safe way of . . . of loving you without putting our friendship at risk."

A smile spreading across her face, Miyako leaned forward on the bed.

"Hika -", he began.

"Let me finish," she cut him off in the middle of her name, "I don’t know if I’ll be able to work up the guts again, if I don’t. I think I do have feelings for you. I think I’ve had them for a long time, but I convinced myself they weren’t anything more than friendship, because they scared me. I was scared of losing you, or of things becoming weird between us if we started dating. I guess I'm still scared of that, but I can't keep denying my feelings. So, here goes . . . I love you. I want you to be my boyfriend. I hope you feel the same about me, but I understand if you think we should stay friends and I suppose I’ll find a way to deal with my feelings."

Her own calm amazing her, she pressed the phone tighter to her ear and waited for him to answer. Miyako might have gotten up off the bed and have been wearing away the rug by pacing from one end to another, but the quiet inside Hikari had not changed. It was like all thought and emotion had been suspended until he spoke.

"I love you too," he said simply, and warmth rose to fill her.

"You do?"

"I do."