The night I first met Suo Sen, my courage was a small lantern in the wind after days of pacing.

I stepped out of a café freshly hired; the night breeze was cold as water and heavy as stone.

The bar strip rumbled like distant thunder behind neon, a sound that made the air prickle.

Classmates had warned me this street wasn’t calm; at this hour, punks and rough girls drifted here like stray cats.

Fear sat on my chest like a boulder, and even the café boss urged me to keep three blocks clear.

But I dug in like a sapling in hard soil and refused to bend.

It wasn’t the high pay I clung to; I wanted to try a skin opposite to mine, like shedding old bark.

People always saw me as gentle, timid, shy, yet I wasn’t a goody-two-shoes tethered to my parents’ leash.

I liked punk over lace, studs over ruffles, sparks over moonlight, not those white-and-gray JK school uniforms.

Maybe that’s why I envied Suo Sen; to me she was handsome and bright, a comet that didn’t ask permission.

She wasn’t like the street’s rough girls; she wore a black heavy-metal jacket and a skull crop tee, cool as a blade.

Studded knee-high boots and fishnets framed her legs; put her on a stage and every eye would fly to her like moths.

I had dreamed of those clothes in secret, yet when chance knocked, I let it drift past like a leaf.

It felt wrong—a timid rabbit in a wolf’s hide—so I always backed away at the last step.

But Suo Sen didn’t flinch; she stood behind me like a wall in a storm.

She was shocked at first by my strange secret, then she chose to hold up my dream like a lantern.

“You only need to be the self you like,” she said, calm as a still lake and right as rain.

That matter-of-fact tone hooked me; it was a rope in my drowning sea.

I had never pictured taking off my glasses and stepping into punk, but she opened that door with a smile.

She found wildness under my old-fashioned shell, a ribbon of beauty curled there like a hidden vine.

Meeting Suo Sen felt like sunlight after fog, and I kept thanking fate in the quiet of my chest.

One night she pulled me out of a big hotel like a hand from deep water, and I never forgot the warmth.

It was unbelievable: when I finally dared to tackle the hard thing, the sky dropped me such a gift.

Someone like me becoming friends with someone like her felt like a dream you’re scared to breathe on.

Sometimes I feared the night; if I fell asleep, would our days pop like bubbles and vanish without a trace?

Teachers called my name because sleep ran thin, yet one sight at dusk always settled me like rain on dust.

Suo Sen would sit on a high stool, coffee in hand, waiting to greet me with a soft nod.

My most precious friend was there for me; it was a wish I’d never dared dream aloud.

Time moved, and my feelings thickened like tea left to steep, dark and fragrant.

From first-meeting satisfaction to sharing a school, I wanted to see how deep my heart could dive.

I racked my brain to win her heart, tossing pebbles of hints into a very still pond.

But in the end she was dense as a block of wood, and every ripple died at her feet.

To me, she filled every hour of the day, twenty-four pearls on one string.

“Uh… but Yuzuki, even so, Suo Sen’s a girl,” a friendly classmate said one day, cautious as a cat.

“Can two girls really go somewhere?” Her question fell like a pin in a quiet room.

Only then did it hit me like lightning; I’d fallen for a woman I never expected.

“If that’s true… if I end up with Suo Sen, then between us, who’s the girlfriend?” I asked, earnest as a child.

“Eh?” My classmate blinked, shock fluttering like a startled sparrow.

But I cared more about the puzzle than her stare; it gnawed like a mouse at night.

“Maybe we’re both girlfriends? Then what am I… the girlfriend’s girlfriend?” Strange ideas bubbled up like spring water.

She finally cut in, waving her hands like fans to stop my ramble. “Hey, Yuzuki, isn’t it bigger that it’s two girls in love?”

“But what if we really end up together?” I looked at her, the worry a knot in my chest that wouldn’t loosen.

“She’s a blockhead now, sure, but it still matters, right?” I added, the thought buzzing like a fly.

She fell silent, eyes soft as dusk, then asked, “So even if you and Suo Sen are the same sex, you’ll stay with her?”

“Isn’t that obvious?” I said, meeting her gaze like sunrise meeting frost.

“I admire Suo Sen. Even if she’s a girl like me, that doesn’t change how important she is in my heart.”

“And if someone changes their love just because of gender, isn’t that the strange thing?”

Suo Sen is the one I admire most, the one I want to walk beside, for as long as the road runs.