Rise Read Online Free

to lose. Nothing except Yuki, and that was huge. That was unthinkable. “Actually, Oneechan, I do need your advice.”
    Keiko’s eyes went wide, and she exchanged a glance with Myu.
    “Oh my god,” Myu said. “He’s serious.”
    “If...if a girl cooked a bentou to share with you,” he stammered. He could picture the steam rising off his cheeks. “And you didn’t go for lunch with her because you had baseball practice...”
    “Then you’d be a total moron,” Keiko said, whipping her orange skin at him. He winced as it smacked him in the arm. “Because clearly practice did nothing for you, either.”
    “Who cooked you lunch?” Myu asked.
    “Um.” Tanaka looked down at his textbook. He couldn’t look Keiko in the face. “Yuki.”
    Keiko sighed. “You’re a screw-up, you know that?”
    Tanaka slumped onto the
kotatsu
table. “I know.”
    Keiko leaned back, crossing her legs in front of her. “She’s your best friend and you can’t even talk to her?”
    “I got scared, okay?” Might as well completely embarrass himself in front of them. It couldn’t really get much worse. “I didn’t want to mess it up.”
    Myu slipped the last piece of her orange into her mouth. “She means that much to you, huh?”
    “What if I’m wrong?” Tanaka said. “What if I ask her out, and I totally got my signals mixed up?”
    “Oh, come on,” Keiko said. “You guys are totally weird for hanging out, anyway. Guys and girls don’t hang out unless they’re dating. Half of First Year thinks you’re a couple, you know.”
    “Yeah, but we aren’t,” he said, looking down at the table. He’d felt an unstoppable pull toward her since kindergarten. He remembered begging his mom every day to walk past her school so they could walk home together in their mismatched hats and uniforms. Yuki in her yellow sun hat, Tanaka in that itchy straw hat with the blue ribbon. Living worlds apart but parallel, black and white, opposite but needing each other. Tanaka knew how to make the class laugh at his goofy jokes, but when they stopped laughing, it was only Yuki who kept beaming at him. It was easy to hold her hand then. When had it become so difficult to reach for her?
    “Isn’t Yuki friends with that exchange student?” Myu said quietly.
    Keiko paused. “The one who started in the spring?”
    “Katie Greene,” Tanaka said. “And yes. The three of us hang out all the time.”
    Keiko grinned at Tanaka’s English textbook. “Wait a minute. Love triangle much?”
    “
Chige yo
,” he spat back. “She’s not my type. And she’s dating Yuu Tomohiro, anyway.” Myu’s eyes glazed over, her hand frozen on the cover of her textbook.
    “Oh, so what’s your type?” Keiko teased.
    Tanaka swallowed, the lump in his throat so big he could barely breathe. “Just Yuki,” he said.
    Keiko smiled. “Not bad. That’s pretty romantic, Ichirou.”
    Tanaka looked at Myu then, her face as pale as glass. “
Ne
, Saeda. Are you okay?” Her fingernails, splotched with blue glitter and tiny polka-dot bows, scraped along the cover of the text.
    “I’m fine,” she said. “Sorry.”
    “Oh,” Keiko said, raising her hand to her mouth. “Myu, I’m so sorry. We didn’t mean to mention Tomohiro.”
    “It’s okay,” Myu said, waving her hand in the air. “It was a long time ago.” But Tanaka saw it on her face, how much their breakup still stung. Her eyes glistened with held-back tears. He didn’t want to ever see that look on Yuki’s face. He was terrified of doing something like that to her.
    “Listen,” he said, hoping to ease Myu’s pain. “You know I used to be in Calligraphy Club with Tomo-kun, but I’ve been hanging around with him and Katie a lot because of Yuki. And I wanted you to know that the rumors weren’t true.”
    “What are you talking about?” Keiko asked, putting a hand on her friend’s shoulder. From the looks of it, Tanaka was making it worse.
    “No, no,” he said. “I mean, he didn’t