I own the plot, but not Pokemon nor the song Begin Again by Taylor Swift (from which I was inspired).

.♡.♡.♡.♡.

Friday.♡.

She walks briskly down the street, bundled in a toasty overcoat with her head down. Her long, mocha- brown hair, pulled up into a ponytail, whips around her as the biting winter winds puff at it, the cold turning her cheeks a rosy red. One by one, she passes by storefronts with neon signs and strangers whose lifelines flit past but never interlace with hers.

Do they all know? Can they tell? Do they see the damp paths snaking down the sides of her face, showing where tears had once run? She's tempted to smudge those tear tracks off, but that would be too obvious. She doesn't want anyone to see that she's been crying, doesn't want anyone to know. Hopefully, no one will realise.

Her footfalls hit the sidewalk in time with the snowflakes, and instantly a melody forms in her head, words starting to arrange themselves into verses. She scrunches her eyes closed and refuses to write a song about him- after all, wasn't it her passion for music that had caused him to want to leave? He had given her a choice, her music or him.

When you force someone to choose, don't be surprised if they don't choose you, she'd told him bitterly, before walking away. She had felt and still feels sadness, disappointment even, but not regret. Her music is her life, and if N doesn't respect that, he obviously isn't the one. Nevertheless, she wonders if things could've ended differently, in a parallel universe.

Realising that she's reached an intersection faster than expected, her eyes dart up to take in her bearings. She prepares to turn the corner when, suddenly, a figure in blue comes hurtling towards her.

"Oof!"

"Ahh! I'm really sorry!"

The boy who'd rammed into her extends a hand to pull her up, and when she doesn't accept it, he grabs her arm and lifts her to a sitting position. His warm, molten chocolate eyes then notice that the contents of her bag had been scattered around on the concrete by the collision.

"Your things! I'm really really sorry!" he almost yells in his rush. "I was just trying to catch the bus-" said yellow bus rolls into view, heading for the bus stop just ahead. She blinks a few times, coming out of her dazed state, expecting him to abandon her and make a run for the bus. Instead, he bends down and starts helping her collect the various items strewn on the pavement.

"Huh? B-but the bus! Your bus just came! Go, go, you can still make it!" She stands herself up, ushering him towards the bus stop and beginning to pick up her own things.

"Nah, it's fine. Figured I owed it to you to help you after knocking you over," he responds sheepishly with a boyish grin, scratching the back of his head nervously.

"It's really okay, you know. I wasn't expecting help anyways," she shrugs, not quite meeting his eyes. Together, they gather up the last random pieces of scrap paper and deposit them into White's bag.

"Whew! We make a pretty great team! Just in time for the next bus, too!" He grins at her again, and somehow, inexplicably, her heart melts just a little, at the edges. Although she still remembers the lessons her recent heartache has taught her, she manages to dredge up a smile from somewhere, along with a thank you. And then he's gone, running like the wind to catch the next bus, and she's left standing at the same spot staring after him.

The second the yellow bus whirls away from view, she spins abruptly and runs all the rest of the way home, not stopping to take a break nor to breathe out the snowflakes caught in her throat.

.♡.♡.♡.♡.

Saturday.♡.

She sits criss- cross- applesauce on her bed, with her guitar next to her and stapled sheets of university standard- issue manuscript paper on her lap. Pen in hand, she scribbles down musical notes one after another, occasionally pausing to play it out on her guitar.

Music is her refuge, the rhythms and notes a second home to her, healing her from deep inside. As she loses herself in her assignment, the dull throb in her chest fades away.

Right as she's about to flip the page, her phone screen lights up.

She scrutinises the screen for a second, trying to place the number, before her thumb accidentally slides across the touch screen.

"Hello? Is this, uh, White Mayako?"

Cursing under her breath, she tries to reject the call, but the other person has already been put through to her. Yet somehow, the voice of the caller was starting to sound somewhat familiar....

"Yes, speaking," she says hesitantly, trying to reassure herself that it was probably just her déjà vu acting up again. Balancing the phone between her shoulder and ear, she continues on the guitar instrumental she really needs to hand up by tomorrow.

"Well, sorry to bother you, but I seem to have your notebook," the person on the other side laughs nervously. "Remember when I, ah, knocked you over yesterday? I helped you put your things back in place, and I suppose I thought it was mine."

Her notebook? Her attention secured, she puts down the sheets of manuscript paper she had been composing on. "My notebook? Which one?"

"Uh, it's white and black in colour. There are some poems written inside that seem like lyrics, I think, and-"

"That's my songwriting book!" she exclaims a little louder than she normally would have. Bottling her mixed feelings, she checks her bag for it. It's not there. "Oh my goodness, I-I need it back!"

"Yeah, I figured it was important since both your name and phone number was written on the first page. Do you want to meet up so I can pass this back to you?"

"Oh, uh, okay, sure. Is the café around the corner fine? It's near my dorm room which is near my university, so...." she pauses, realising it would be unfair to ask him to make an extra trip just for her convenience. "Or is there any other place you'd prefer?"

"Nah, it's fine. I'm from the uni too, sophomore year, actually. So, 3 o'clock at the café, okay?"

"Sure! Thanks so much!"

"Welcome, see you there!" The line goes dead as she realises she's forgotten to ask for his name even. Leaving his number as unregistered, she goes back to her assignment, still feeling grateful for his kindness. Any other person might've just kept the notebook for himself or, even worse, thrown it away.

A soft half- smile starts to settle on her features, and she writes the wrong note in the wrong bar twice before she realises that she is majorly distracted, mostly because she's subconsciously trying to write a new song.

.♡.♡.♡.♡.

Sunday.♡.

She drives down the street with the car windows rolled down, not caring a bit about the warm air from the heater escaping into the frostiness outside. Her favourite song blasts out from the speakers, and she hums to it, but soon frowns and switches it off. She's not afraid of being laughed at- it's more like, the song brings back memories she'd rather forget about. Then she raises an eyebrow, wondering when her decisions revolved around him, and turns the music back on.

Shaking away the swarm of memories, she looks out for a lot, finally parallel- parking down the block before walking to the café. She is early and expects him to be late, because that's the kind of person he seems to be, but to her surprise he's already there. He waves to her from a corner seat, and she walks over as he pulls out the chair for her.

"Hi," she says breathlessly, a smile forming instantly on her face. Internally, she smacks herself and tells herself to tone it down a little.

"Hi yourself," he grins back, and he doesn't hold his enthusiasm back. It makes her feel ashamed, slightly, but not really. "It's Black here, and I suppose you're White?"

They hit it off immediately, so quickly that it scares her. She's not the kind of person who warms up to people easily, but.... He listens to the same music as she does, and likes the same singers and bands. He has a thousand anecdotes and little tales to share and she's more than content to sit and listen to them (she has a feeling this doesn't happen often). He likes to listen to her opinions, and while he doesn't agree blindly, he also doesn't refute them without listening her out first. He finds her funny, too, and that in itself is funny. Maybe because N never found her funny, and instead took everything way too seriously.

For a second, she forgets that she's here to collect her notebook, not to meet a friend.

Most importantly, he understands her. While he's not a music student like she is, he's still majoring in art, after all. He just gets it. He knows how it's like when she has a block and nothing gets out no matter how hard she tries, and he knows the pain, the urge to produce something that won't come out. He's experienced the sleepless nights spent tossing and turning and throwing pillows at the wall.

He's felt the implosion/explosion afterwards, when she falls into her own world and does nothing but compose for hours on end. He knows how drained she becomes at the end of it all, but how alive she'd felt. He understands it all, the adrenaline surge, the rush, the nonstop heartbeats and cramped fingers.

She shows him her songs in the spur of the moment (which is so unlike her usual self that she almost hesitates), and he doesn't laugh or frown or question them. He just contemplates them deeply, and tries to sing them. In return, he flips open his photo album, full of pictures of his drawings and sketches. Most of the ones at the front are gorgeous paintings, mostly oil and bright bright acrylic, but at the back are images of graffiti art, presumably done by him. They are a class of their own- her breath catches in her throat, and she just stares on in wonder. She's never seen just how beautiful vandalism could be, but she does now.

He paints in a myriad of rainbow shades, coaxing delicate curls and swirls out from cold spray bottles. And then he swoops in with a bold, vivid finish, maybe a dark outline, maybe a random symbol. He layers hues on top of one another in dizzying, daring stacks, letting the wet paint bleed, letting the colours decide where they want to go, setting a picture free. It's so beautiful she almost cries, and she looks at him with newfound respect.

"These.... these are amazing," she says in awe, and he just shrugs.

"Your works are amazing. You're amazing." He says the last part in a rush, turning away as his cheeks darken; she just looks down with a smile.

"Your artworks are really great- to be honest, I like the graffiti ones best," she admits. "Maybe it's just my lack of taste, but although everything is pretty much brilliant, it's the graffiti that stands out."

"No, no. I like those the best too, see? It's the thrill of going to places in the dark and adding your mark there, hopefully without the authorities realising," he laughs. "Got spotted once or twice, but I always escaped before the cops caught up."

"Woah...." she laughs back, taking in his statement. She checks her watch. It's already seven, and she has no idea where all that time went. "I hate to cut this conversation short, but I really gotta get going."

"Oh.... sure." He stands up and gets ready to pay for the bill, waving aside White's protests. "You can get it the next time round," he smiles cheekily, accompanying her out the door and towards her car.

Their footsteps beat time against the pavement comfortably, her feet moving steadily and his more clumsily, stopping every now and then to wait for her to catch up. Once again, she feels the stirrings of a song start to form in her head, and this time she lets the music flow through her like second nature. She has a feeling this song will about second chances, about a pattern repeating itself. Still, she feels the need to warn him that her scars are fresh and her walls are high.

"You know...." She wants to tell him, tell him that maybe he shouldn't try for her. Tell him that she still needs time to heal, that he would eventually get bored of waiting for her and just move on.

He gives her a look, one that unmistakably means, try me, and continues on to his next topic (about the camerawork of some famous movie). And she wants to talk about that, too, so she does.

And on a wintry Sunday, walking down the streets with snowflakes crunching underfoot, she feels (herself falling in love again, the past becoming well and truly past, her lifeline interweaving with his) -

- it all begin again.

.♡.♡.♡.♡.

As usual, please comment, follow and vote! Thank you :)