Erito - Rina Kawamura - Best Friend-s Girlfrien... Apr 2026

Erito Saito had never been afraid of heights. He’d climbed the old transmission tower behind the school in his second year, just to prove a point. But standing in Rina Kawamura’s apartment doorway, watching her towel-dry her hair, he felt a vertigo far more paralyzing.

“You’re staring,” she said, not looking up from the couch where she was curling her legs beneath her.

“And yet, he doesn’t see me. Not really. He sees a girlfriend. A role. You… you look at me like I’m a painting you’re trying to understand.” Erito - Rina Kawamura - Best friend-s girlfrien...

Kaito. His best friend. The man who’d lent him rent money when his freelance design gig dried up. The man who’d held his hair back when he’d drunk too much at the office party. And now, the man whose girlfriend was standing barefoot in a thin sweatshirt, offering him a beer.

Erito keeps it in his wallet, not out of lingering love, but as a reminder. Some things broken cannot be reglued. Some lines, once crossed, redraw the entire map. Erito Saito had never been afraid of heights

“You’re late,” she said, not unkindly. Her voice was the same low, smoky murmur that had haunted his dreams for six months. “Kaito’s stuck at work. He said you’d keep me company.”

Instead, he said, “Because you are.” “You’re staring,” she said, not looking up from

The air left the room. Erito felt the floor tilt. He had rehearsed this moment a hundred times in the shower, in his car, in the five seconds between sleep and waking. In every rehearsal, he was noble. He stood up, apologized, and walked out.

“No. You were perfect. That was the problem.”

Erito had no good answer. He still doesn’t, years later. He could say chemistry . He could say the heart wants what it wants . But the truth was uglier: he had wanted something that wasn’t his, and he had taken it. Not because Rina was special. Not because Kaito was flawed. But because, for one selfish, burning moment, Erito had wanted to feel chosen.