P L A Y L I S T

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"RONOA-KUN."

March looked across at me from the sack of boxes that partly hid her face. We were in the storeroom, packing all the new arrivals that were recently shipped from Japan to America and disposing of all the outdated, mundane ones.

Our gaze met in between the cardboard boxes and I shot her a quizzical look. "Kun?" I asked, puzzled. It wasn't just a question of informality anymore but an answer.

The corners of her lips shifted and I could have sworn to myself that she laughed.

"Well, who was the one who told me not to call you an idiot? So, I searched japanese boy names and google came up with kun." March replied, sealing the boxes with tape, "If anything, you should blame google."

To think that March would take my words seriously and then putting in all that extra effort for a single name - my name, I find that it's all too crazy. She had never been the sort who'd give a damned and spend such things on degradable and monotone guys like me. It's a measure of sanity that she lacked. But there was something inside me that held onto that name with white knuckles and forged promises, as if I didn't want it to let go, as if I didn't want that promise to break. It stirred softly, starting as small and as gently as the wind caressing my cheekbones.

It reminded me of our highschool days. When our teacher called us for our presentation for the design technology project, March stood up and said everything I thought we weren't supposed to. She explained how those toys in that store had been fake and that the design of them were entirely off her margin. I stood beside her, thinking that if madness was a person, she would be every of it.

"Kun is a japanese way used to address a young male usually in his late teenage years," I told her, "or a male person with the same inferiority or status as you, or 一"

"A male friend," March swiftly cut me off. "I know, Ronoa-kun."

I frozed, loss for words. But my mind was in a whirl. She didn't know that I loved her, but I do. I loved her since the beginning, since that day when she first walked into my highschool life. Love much like March, is madness, tapping at the brink of my insanity. The lack of reason for it made the emotion so flawless. It destroyed me, bit by bit, piece by piece and I pictured March repeating that name over and over again.

I look at her and for the first time, our gaze locked.

"Ronoa-kun," March breathed.