Later, much later, Nao would swear that it seemed to take forever.

In reality it didn’t take long, not at all, before Shugo got better, though admittedly it took months before he was strong enough to run around again. It didn’t seem, in any way, that Shugo would ever play rugby again, but then which one of them would ever want to? For a while ( Read more... )

Asuka used to write Nao letters.

She’d loved doing it, despite the fact that they saw each other every day, and Nao had loved getting them. Some were long others short; all of them filled with little anecdotes and longer stories, filled with random thoughts that popped into her head at any given time, things she had just needed to tell her best ( Read more... )

It’s not until after they escape the island that Nao even thinks about their school.

She wonders, idly, about their exams and grades, about next year and the things they would’ve learned, as if any of that matters at all. All that happened in the before, everything that had been a part of their live, they must now forget, or if not forget at least ( Read more... )

In the before it rains.

This is how Nao thinks now, this is the way she defines her - their - life now. In the before, the after and the during the game - the same game which once upon a time had been nothing to her, nothing but a horrible, distant law that she thought, idly, would never affect her at all. She wonders, briefly, if this is how they ( Read more... )