i don't know if this is the right place to post this but it just feels right since she always loved bandori.

on may 19th, we lost a shining star in the bandori community. her name was bella. she was 16 years old and passed away from a blood clot in the lungs. it was sudden and completely unexpected and left so many loved ones devastated.

i met her through the love live/bandori community a few years ago. i made a comment on a post regarding hina. she found my profile and messaged me because of it, saying that hina was her favorite too. from there on, our friendship soared off. there was never a dull moment in our conversations and before i knew it, i was considering her one of my close friends. i grew to have a very deep connection with her.

she always had trouble determining whether hina or aya was her #1 girl, so after a while she just determined they were on equal ground and loved them both. this marked the start of us associating ayahina cards and art with eachother (me as hina, her as aya). every time we came across content regarding the two of them, we would share it with eachother. i don't think she ever fully understood how happy the small things like her tagging me in bandori art or her shitposts really made me. she also adored himari and rinko!

bella was the type of girl whose incredible energy was practically infectious to everybody around her where, even after her passing... i can still feel her presence resonating through me in the great memories i shared with her. her music taste was something that always stood out with her - being somebody who considers themselves very versatile in what they listen to, meeting somebody like bella who was the same way was pretty awesome! from some pop, to japanese music from the games we loved, to more obscure "emo" bands from 2014 that we were still all over. we understood eachother a lot in this regard, and some of my favorite songs to this day are ones that she recommended to me. she enjoyed and appreciated the small things, like painting jars and designing grimoires. she opened my eyes to her spectacular world of creativity. her passion and excitement she held for everything she did was enthralling and i couldn't help but come to love these little things, too. i need to emphasize how beautiful she was - not just on the inside, but the outside too. god, she was a beautiful girl. i think i've lost count of the amount of times that i told her how astoundingly gorgeous i thought she was. she would always dodge my compliments and dismiss them. she had very big trouble finding love in herself but was always the first to offer a hand to people when they're down. no matter how hard she was struggling.

my heart sinks to my stomach and my head goes light every time i think about her and know she'll never message me back. i want to scream and fucking kick at the entity in this world that dictates that this young girl with so much left to provide should lose her life. i want to wake up and have this disappear into nothing but a dream. but it won't. it's not going to and this won't go away. there are so many emotions coursing through me but it all leads me back to this same feeling - disorientation and hopelessness.

i'm so sad and deeply scarred by this loss. bella was somebody i could take comfort in calling a great friend, which is so hard for me to come by. i can't help but mourn and wish life had taken her down a different path than this, but i also know that she would beat my ass if i allowed her passing to hurt me too much. i want her to be remembered for all of the great things that she brought to the world. she changed so many lives for the better by simply being her. i'm going to live on through my days in her honor and i will always carry a piece of her with me.

fly high, bella. you were too good for this cruel world. thank you for sharing your light with me and so many others. you will be missed dearly. i love you.