The air in the hallway of Sunrise Heights felt different now—thinner, quieter. For months, this corridor had been the neutral ground between two warring states. Now, it was just a stretch of worn linoleum leading to two empty rooms.
Rika and Rentaro stood outside their respective doors, Unit 301 and 302. They each held a single brass key.
"It looks so much smaller when it’s empty," Rentaro said, leaning his head into 301. The echoes of his footsteps bounced off the bare walls where his posters and figure shelves used to be. The ghost of a pencil-sketch smudge on the far wall was the only sign he had ever lived there.
Rika stepped into 302. The room was sterile, exactly as it had been when she arrived, save for a small indent in the carpet where her heavy study desk had sat for countless hours. She walked to the center of the room and turned in a slow circle. This was the room where she had hidden her tears, where she had memorized thousands of equations, and where she had first realized that a boy across the hall was the only person who truly understood her.
"I used to hate this room," Rika admitted, her voice echoing softly. "I saw it as a temporary cell. A place to wait until I was 'ready' for the life my father wanted."
Rentaro walked across the hall and leaned against her doorframe. "And now?"
"Now, I realize it was the place where I actually started living," she said, looking at him. "If I hadn't moved here, I would still be in that mansion, perfectly successful and perfectly miserable."
Rentaro reached out, and Rika met him at the threshold. They stood in the "DMZ" of the hallway one last time.
"I remember standing right here the night of the festival," Rentaro murmured, looking down at the floor. "I wanted to say so many things, but I was too afraid that if I said them, the rivalry would end and I wouldn't know how to talk to you anymore."
"The rivalry didn't end, Rentaro," Rika said, a soft smile playing on her lips. "It just evolved into a partnership."
They walked down to the manager's office together. The old landlord, a man who had seen hundreds of students come and go, took their keys and dropped them into a metal tray with two distinct clinks.
"Moving on to bigger things, eh?" the landlord rasped, peering over his spectacles. "You two were the quietest tenants I had. Usually, I have to break up parties. With you two, I just heard the sound of page-turning and coffee brewing."
"We had a lot of 'inventory' to manage, sir," Rentaro said with a wink.
As they stepped out of the building and onto the street, the spring sun was warm on their backs. They didn't look back at the third-floor windows. They didn't need to. The rooms were empty because everything that mattered was currently walking down the sidewalk, side-by-side.
"One chapter closed," Rika said, adjusting her bag.
"And a much better one opening," Rentaro replied.
They headed toward the station, leaving the "Convenience Store Rivals" of Sunrise Heights behind, and moving toward the future they had built with their own four hands.24Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡgW71IVUxCw
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