Chapter 1: Someone You Saved

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"Then, I'll help you... make the best memories of your life."

"It's a promise."

That night, was when just the sound of an interruption made the most significant turn in my life. It's all because of her, and it's all because of me. That we're here, spending this limited time and making The Best Memories.

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A young boy walks to the nearby retail store.

He is a youth with bright skin, a little curly, messy dark hair till the average length of a male's and his height 172 cm tall. An emotionless look stuck on his face, and the nonchalant aura and coldness surrounded his atmosphere. Those sharp, dark, and dead eyes which reside no hope in them, he carried dead feelings of a trapped soul in a human body.

Yuki is a shut-in guy who lives in his apartment alone without his parents or anybody and only has relation with one thing in the outside world, the school. His social life is only extended to his school and his apartment, and being the shut-in he is, he plays games all day to pass his time and lie around, but now is the time when he has no more interest in living a life so full of regrets and loneliness.

It was night-time around 10:00 PM, as the automatic sliding glass doors opened, and Yuki took his step inside the retail store. He directly grabs the latest trending cup noodles and snacks from the food section and wanders around for a while, 'trying' to amuse himself with the modern hotshot items, but could not seem to develop an interest in it.

"T-that'll be 150 Yen..!" The cashier girl started nervously.

Yuki slides the 50 and 100 Yen coins onto the cashier's desk, leaving the counter and store at once.

12:00 AM

After returning back to his apartment and only home, he snuggles his feet under the Kotatsu Table, placing the steaming hot and fresh cup of noodles on its surface.

He slurps the noodles just like 'ordinary people', 'trying to enjoy' them. Yuki attempts to learn that feeling of pleasure like other people. Yuki gazes out of his balcony towards the only light source falling into his darkened room, the Moon. After finishing his meal, he puts the dishes in the sink and walks to his balcony. It was around 12:30 AM; as Yuki looked in the sky, the gentle cold wind passed through his hair.

"In this 'life' we live, is it really worth the struggles we bare?"

The young boy mumbles to himself while sitting on the balcony's railing. In the dark moonlit, lonely night glittered thousands of colorful lights on which Yuki's gaze fell. His sight looks down on the city of 'Tokyo'. His arms grip the steel railing of his balcony as he sits on it; the height of his apartment's floor is 10 floors above. The stars twinkle and shiver as their last glow falls upon Yuki's skin; He spends the last moment with himself before ending his meaningless journey, named 'life.'

"In this life we live, is it really worth the struggles we bare?"

"Why is it that I am not able to feel the mere sense of affection towards others…?"

"Why is my life the only the one to be so unmotivated,"

"These regrettable feelings are the only emotion flowing through my veins,"

"In this life with no extraordinary events and no motivation,"

"It's nothing. I'm already dead, but still can see this world."

"I can't bare it. I don't want to move forward."

"This life is… just so futile to live."

Yuki loses the grip of his footing, leaning his feet up in the air, he attempts to move forward as he lets his grip loose from the balcony's steel railing. His eyes close slowly as he steps ahead to free himself from this unchanging nothingness.

"Farewell." Yuki mumbled with the last breath, and a loud thump.

Ding-Dong!

Suspiciously enough, somebody dared to press a doorbell at 1:00 AM. However, that caught his attention and interrupted Yuki's 'suicide.'

"A visitor at 1:00 AM, who is it, this late…?"

"Guess it's usual for normal people, it must be a stranger in my case, and nobody's ever visited me." Yuki doubtfully speaks to his mind, jumps back into his balcony and walks slowly towards the door.

"Who can be there, a burglar? Or is it a delivery? This late though."

He walks through his room towards the main door. Yuki grips the knob of the door as the doorbell rings another time. He rotates the doorknob on the right side and opens the entrance… peeking out of his door and finding a somewhat familiar face ahead of him.

A girl stood with a small box of two-cup noodles in her hand. She wore a cap of the retail store Yuki visited near 10:00 PM.

"D-delivery for Mr. Takahashi!" The girl said nervously, raising the cup noodles box towards Yuki, who was peeking out of his door. He takes a look at the order, then the girl. "I haven't ordered anything." He corrected, "This must be a wrong delivery address."

A pause came to the conversation, and silence formed in the air.

Her skin lit bright red; in an instant her worried face on the spot "I... I delivered at the wrong address?!" The girl questioned herself.

She takes out the paper slip from her pocket, only to find out that she delivered it to the wrong address, and this one does not match the one instructed to her in the paper slip. She looks up towards Yuki and notices that the lights behind him are switched off, meaning that she has just interrupted and ruined the sleep of a responsible citizen of society! Her eyes start to swirl, and she starts to get overly worried.

Oh, yes, this is the state where the stage 'anxiety' kicks in. The absolutely normal emotion of the human mind, it is when your brain reacts to stress or alerts you of a danger ahead. But here, things have messed up so bad; it results in overthinking about losing her part-time job! Her thoughts are more than ready to rush here and there!

"I-I totally messed up!" The girl thinks anxiously, "Ahh, I am so sorry, I am really sorry for interrupting your sleep! P-Please overlook this tragedy and get back to sleep!" The girl blurted out to Yuki. His cold yet emotionless, neutral expression was still on his face, but for the girl, it was a disgusted and offended emotion he expressed, another fuel for the girl to overthink.

"Oh my god, I was too rude! And what was up with that last line anyway, it's like I just ordered him to sleep!" She regretted her own words, "I am really getting fired! Not only did I deliver the cup noodles to the wrong address, I also ruined this person's sleep and became 'extremely' rude to him!" She worriedly mumbles to herself, "I'm really getting fired! The manager is going to kill me!"

She gets overly red like a tomato, and her eyes swirl more with anxiety. She overthinks herself to death and causes a disaster in her thoughts to the point that steam comes out of her head! All this happens while Yuki just stands there behind his door, staring. But he finally understood what he found familiar in this girl before.

"She's the cashier from that retail store I visited…." Yuki's thoughts discontinue right away as the girl faints because of taking too much pressure on herself. She becomes unconscious and falls asleep because of pressuring herself too much and not being able to bear the weight of her overly negative thoughts. Yuki looks down on the sleeping girl but doesn't bother to flinch or ever seem to care; he simply continues to close his door and get back to where he was, but the new CCTV Camera put recently in his building did its job of recording the whole scene.

"If I don't do something and leave this person be, I will be probably looked down in society, and then more troublesome people will cause me pain." Yuki thought, "I'll have to pretend to help now?"

"Jeez, why make such a big deal… you didn't trouble me, till now."

"What a drag…." Yuki complains as he lets out a tired and bothered huff. He then 'properly' drags in the poor delivery girl and flips the buttons on the switchboard, lighting up his living room. After he settles and sits down on his Tatami Mat (Japanese Floor Mat) spread in the living room, resting his chin on the back of his right hand and his elbow on the table while giving this situation a better thought… He gazes at the cap she is still wearing, which he doesn't bother to take off.

"A girl working deliveries this late at night… On the top of that, it's just cup noodles… and wasn't she the cashier earlier? It looks like she's sixteen or seventeen something too."

"Managing two different shifts and overworking night shifts with school just the next morning, talk about a smart and hardworking schedule."

"I wonder what she's working so hard for, what is her goal she is trying to achieve. What good is she trying to achieve by this hard work? It sucks."

Yuki's mind is pretty questioning. "It feels somewhat strange that I actually took in somebody in their hard time."

"If the camera really hadn't captured this that time, then would I really move my body for somebody in need, even if worse happened to them? Did I really help her or myself by saving some respect?"

Another dashing disturbance to the world of his thoughts,

"In the end, I'm not the guy who can--" Yuki's thoughts are interrupted once again after he notices the slight movement in the girl. "Finally awake, huh?" Yuki asks the girl after noticing her consciousness again. She attempted to open her eyes and struggled a bit, but the first thing she saw… was Yuki' staring into her eyes or rather her soul.'

Her imagination ran wild; is it with fear? "How're you feeling now-" Yuki hesitates on his words because as soon as he speaks, she gets startled and jumps scared. The girl immediately lifts up her upper body and comes into a sitting position.

She notices half of her lower body is shoved under the heating Kotatsu Table in the middle of the living room, suddenly turning light pink out of embarrassment with tiny red stripes of blush around her cheeks! "I am so very sorry for causing you so much trouble!" Her voice was so quiet and fragile, yet it felt loud as her embarrassment made her lunatic. She spoke only apologetically with her mouth. She was humiliated. Her eyes swirl with confusion and worrying guilt, steam flies out of her head, and she bows down to the ground, respectfully going on a rampage of apologies in a worshipping pose! "I'm sorry for causing this much trouble. I never intended to bother you or ruin your sleep! Please overlook this silly misunderstanding and accept these cup noodles as my deepest apologies. I-"

"Shut up about that already." Yuki uttered with no emotion.

The sudden interjection by Yuki gave a pause to the girl's overthinking.

"Ah, I'm sorry." She muttered in a low voice, with guilt that is. "I was too loud."

Yuki chooses to not say anything about it but inform her about the bowl of hot soup he put on her side of the table.

"You should hurry up and finish that soup. It'll prevent you from catching a cold."

"Y-You didn't really have to!"

"You should finish it before it gets colder."

She didn't want to trouble somebody this much, incredibly this late at night, but she couldn't deny it after the soup was already made. The girl finishes the soup without any complaints.

"I-it tastes a bit different, even though it's the cup noodles from our store only. Is this your own addition of flavors?"

"I guess so." Yuki replied.

"W-wait, the cup noodles from our store, only…? Are these the ones I brought as order?!-" She's shocked, still as an attempt to not cause any more scene, she lets it pass.

"Thank you so much for being so kind even when I disturbed you so much."

"You're really considerate and kind. I don't know how to even repay you…."

Yuki remains silent and reserved.

"I just did what a normal person would do in shows or on TV. It's the first time somebody has thanked me, and how should I even react to this?' Yuki is confused in his thoughts once again.

The dead silence unnerves the girl a bit as she feels awkward and uncomfortable; Yuki's cold and negative aura has an effect on her, but not much compared to others. Is she trained?

"A-Anyway, I should get going now. I'll visit sometime again to properly thank your kindness!" Attempting to escape the situation, she grabs her delivery bag and walks to the exit/entrance door.

"Wait."

Her body flinches for a fraction of a second by surprise as a sound finally penetrates the silence.

--Chapter 1 Ends!--