Chapter Text
It’s September 3, 2013, and the Comet Kannazuka has crash-landed on the empty Byakko Plain.
Around it, the world is still tucked away in their beds and fast asleep, while the remnants of a galaxy still linger in the sky in a kaleidoscope of colours. A miniature milky-way of their own hangs in the sky where the comet passed, as though it’d dragged against the fabric of the sky with its speed and allowed such a marvellous sight of the stars to spill through. Instead of charcoal black like it often is at such unholy hours into the nighttime—the sky has divided into a fury of unnamed colours, speckled with stars like they’re fragments of dust.
Somewhere, in one of the hundred houses in the petite neighbourhood of Konda, is the young Yae Miko lying in her bed. Her body twists and turns uncomfortably in the bed, like she’s feeling too hot and too cold all at once, but her eyes never open. She grimaces softly under her breath, curling into a ball on her bed, hoping it’ll make it any easier for her to be asleep.
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At precisely 6:31am, a minute later than it’s supposed to, an alarm rips through the tranquillity of the early morning, single-handedly rousing Yae out of her slumber. She kicks out of her bed, tangling herself in her bedsheets, tossing the rest of them onto the floor in the process. She slams her hand haphazardly against the bedside table, missing it the first time.
The dastardly phone continues to flop around the table as it’s vibrating, leaping high into the air. Yae tries to catch it, all while rubbing her bleary eyes to wake herself. Eventually, she catches it successfully and turns it off, freeing herself from the nuisance of an alarm. She blinks confusedly, staring at her bedsheets with blurry eyes—then, a couple of belated seconds later, a dreadful epiphany crash-lands on her. Her eyes fly open instantly as she comes to notice that first, she isn’t in her own bed and second, she isn’t wearing the same clothes she went to sleep with. Yae looks around her room—well, a room, because whatever she’s looking at right now couldn’t be hers—and panic fills her heart.
Yae finds a mirror on the other side of the room, where she finds herself in the body of someone completely unfamiliar. She squints her eyes. Instead of her own body, she finds herself in the body of somebody she’s never seen before. She’s taller than actuality, and her hair is a harsh shade of indigo instead of the soft pink of her own. Her hips are curvier and… her breasts, Yae’s gaze falls. She touches her chest, fondling it excitedly. Maybe this isn’t such a bad thing…
Unless touching her new body is supposed to be a bad thing. She stops touching herself to question her position for a second, at which point she resumes staring at herself confusedly in the mirror. She scratches her head in confusion, wondering what she should do in a state like this. Yae scans her surroundings, and from the calendars over the desk, backpack on the ground and textbooks on organic chemistry, she assumes the owner of this body must be someone of her age.
“Ei, how long are you going to take up there?” an older female’s voice calls from down below, muffled by the closed door. Yae blinks in confusion, not knowing how to respond in-character. She glances around the neatly-arranged room, each item categorically placed in its proper positions, and determines that somebody like this likely has no personality whatsoever.
“A while more,” Yae yells, because it’s the simplest answer and nothing like the retorts she’d give if somebody tried to wake her by screaming up a flight of stairs. She finds a folded uniform at the foot of her bed with the emblem of a highschool she doesn’t recognise. Thank the heavens for this person’s organisation skills, otherwise she’d have a hard time figuring out how to get used to this new life. After a moment of struggling into an especially prissy school uniform—something she blames on the “rich kid schools”—she runs downstairs. Expecting to see the person’s parents, Yae finds someone who looks identical to her instead. Identical, except for the fact that the twin has shorter hair, with the ends of her hair dyed lighter purple instead of streaks like she has.
“Ei, you’re finally downstairs,” Makoto greets while chewing on a mouthful of rice and natto . “Come here and eat breakfast so we can go to school already,” she invites, as though she isn’t barely halfway through her bowl and is going to need another five minutes, at least, to finish that much food.
So, her name is Ei, she notes and walks forward cautiously. She eyes the unfamiliar house, determining that it’s much nicer than her own home back in Konda. When she glanced out of her window after waking up, to a bustling road full of cars, in the middle of a city, she could tell she was in Tokyo. There’s something tell-tale about Tokyo that’s difficult to miss even upon a single glance, so she’s assuming she must belong to a well-off family who can afford it. “Where’s mom and dad?” Yae questions, standing beside Makoto.
Makoto looks up at her with puffy cheeks and a mouth full of rice. She lifts a hand and presses it against her sister’s forehead, as though to check for a fever. “Are you feeling okay? Did you hit your head while you were sleeping last night?” she worries, voice garbled because of her chewing.
“No?” she tilts her head tentatively.
Makoto gasps dramatically, retracting her hand. “You didn’t slap my hand away?”
“Did you want me to?” Yae makes a face.
“Something’s off about you this morning,” Makoto points out, kicking the chair across the table from her. She nudges her head in its direction, instructing her sister to sit down in front of her and begin her food. There’s something she’s clearly missing here, Yae understands, but she doesn’t know what. “Our parents died in an accident years ago. Did you forget, or something?” she reveals, after noticing the unwavering look of confusion on the latter’s face.
Oh, so she doesn’t have parents. Yae clamps her mouth shut and presses her hands against her thighs. She remains silent, for a lack of words, or a response as to what to say. “Sorry,” she apologises, staring at the white bowl of rice in front of her. It doesn’t make sense then—how they’re so wealthy even though they’re living alone as two sisters. Living in Tokyo is expensive, and coming from a poor family that lives beside paddy fields and wide lakes, she would know what it’s like to not live luxuriously.
“Haven’t heard that word in years,” Makoto looks up, surprised. “Maybe you really did hit your head,” she chuckles, and proceeds to lick up the rest of her rice in her bowl.
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Minutes before the clock hits 7:25am, Yae rouses from her slumber to the familiar sound of an alarm. She sits up quickly, looking at her palms in confusion. They’re paler than she remembers them to be. She looks around her room, and instead of finding it in the state of perpetual chaos it’s often in, she makes the surprising discovery that her things are organised into proper places. She can be certain this is her room, from the way it distinctly smells like flowers instead of laundry detergent like Ei’s room did.
It couldn’t have been that she’d achieved this all in her sleep, so somebody must’ve been in her body while she was in somebody else’s. She runs to the small vanity mirror on her wooden desk and finds herself back in her own body. She scratches her head in confusion, not knowing what to think of. Shyly, her gaze falls to her chest, then lower, and Yae wonders if the soul present in her body had any wrong thoughts when she was around to watch. She makes a small sound, but the eventual realisation that the person was likely too busy cleaning her room to care. She rolls her eyes at the predictability of the other person and resigns to continue with her morning routine.
As she heads to fetch her uniform from her closet, Yae finds her diary left open on her bedside. A pen is rested against the spine to keep it open, and written under yesterday’s date is a note in a handwriting that isn’t her own. September 4th, it writes, and she reads, I’m stuck in someone else’s body. How can a room that smells like cherry blossoms look like utter trash? The owner of this body must have no life.
Yae clenches her fist in annoyance. No life? At least I have a personality!
At that same moment, Kitsune Saiguu bursts into her room, as she does on most mornings. She makes eye contact with Yae, but instead of running forward to embrace her, she retreats to the doorway once more. She knocks on the door and peeks her head in, earning a look of confusion from the latter. “You’re not going to scold me for barging in without knocking, are you?” she asks, baring her teeth.
“When have I ever?” she retorts, folding her arms. Saiguu is like an older sister to her—a university exchange student that’s been staying with them ever since she travelled from abroad to understand her own culture better. They’ve been living together for over a year now, and she’s made herself plenty at home during the time—and her being at home often comes with her uninvited presence.
“Yesterday,” Saiguu points out, making a pained expression. She wipes an invisible tear from her face and presses a hand against her chest dramatically. “I came into your room to wish me good morning and you gave me a whole lecture about how I’m mannerless and had to—”
“I did that?” Yae chokes up with laughter.
“You’re laughing now!” Saiguu bickers. “I can’t believe it!”
“Believe it,” she replies, laughing even harder. She wraps her hands around her stomach and continues to chortle, unable to believe that Ei scolded Saiguu about propriety while she was occupying her body. She can trust, at least, that thoughts of anything out of turn wouldn’t have come to her mind. Saiguu pouts childishly, despite being a whole five years older than her, before eventually running forward again.
“At least you’re back to your usual self, Miko,” she grins, holding her tightly in a warm hug.
…
“Sorry, mom!” Yae yells as she swipes a fresh plate of her mother’s omurice off the kitchen table and runs across the corridor to the living room. Her father’s seated on her couch, one leg folded over the other and a sheet of newspaper open in front of him. He looks up at his hyper-active daughter through his glasses, makes a face at her and resumes his reading thereafter. Over the chorus of complaints from her mother behind her, Yae switches the television on with hopes of catching her favourite cartoon.
Her mother marches into the room soon after with a rag, shaking her head disappointedly. “For the first time in sixteen years, you sat at the table for breakfast and now you’re back to your old habits again. I can’t believe it,” she laments, clicking her tongue in annoyance.
Saiguu runs into the room with her own plate soon after, plopping onto the couch beside Yae. She knocks into her shoulder a little too aggressively, almost causing Yae to lose her grip on her food. She’s gotten used to gestures like this to know how to stop disasters from happening, so she tightens her grip on her plate and tilts it back into its original position before she causes a mess. “You should’ve seen a look on your mother’s face when you ate at the table yesterday. You even refused my offer when I asked you to watch Bam! Bam! Bakudan! ”
“I did?” she gapes.
“I know,” Saiguu gapes, shovelling a mouthful of tamago yaki into her mouth. “Couldn’t believe it either.”
Yae averts her gaze back to the television, which seems to have caught the attention of her generally-disinterested father as well. She increases the sound of the television, trying to hear the commentary with more clarity. Across the screen, is footage of a comet falling through the sky, in a blue, pink, purple sky, grazing the history that’s floating high above them. Curious, she sits forward while chewing slowly on the food in her mouth.
She listens closely to the television, her hands slowly relaxing around her plate till eventually an epiphany so large crashes down on her that the serendipity of events makes sense and she’s forced to jump onto her feet. Yae abandons her half-finished plate of omurice on the table and runs up to her room, much to the disappointment of her parents and Saiguu’s continued confusion. She falls to her knees on her bedroom floor and she writes:
Ei,
My name is Miko. I’m 16 years old, and I study at Narukami High School. It’s a five-minute walk away from my house, around the moor at the head of the long road. I don’t have many special interests, but I like to write, sometimes sing in the shower, and dress myself up. The only time I wear my school’s blazer is in the winter, otherwise I have it tied around my hip. I have three friends that are my age: Ganyu, who’s a little shy but is always there for me when I don’t complete my maths homework; Kokomi, who ties my hair when I don’t have the time to pull my shit together in the morning; and Ayaka, who’s basically a mix of both of them. They understand my crass personality, so you don’t have to be well-mannered around them haha.
Saiguu’s like an older sister to me. She’s the one who you scolded when you were in my body. I found that quite funny, but she wouldn’t be convinced you’re me if you keep doing that. Oh, but you know what I didn’t like? You saying that I had no life. Words don’t just disappear on their own, you know! If we’re going to make this work, we’re going to have to like each other.
Also, I might know why we swapped bodies. I think it might happen again.
───────
And on the eve of September 5th, as the two girls on the opposite sides of Inazuma tuck into their beds, they awake to bodies that aren’t their own. Yae wonders whether she’ll receive a note back, when she returns to her body the next day, she finds:
Miko,
Your ability to care for yourself is beyond helpless. A mushroom can care for itself better than you. Please change your habit.
When she returns to Ei’s body two days after that, she writes on her face with a permanent marker, “Idiot,” and goes to school proudly with it.
───────
And like that, the two girls bicker back and forth however way they can—leaving aggressive messages on post-its or notebooks, scribbling on each other’s homework or ruining each other’s cupboards, and their favourite form of torture—writing odd messages on each other’s faces. They’d reached a point when their friends offered them masks to wear at school to save their dignity, yet the two girls would parade around until they were both scolded by teachers in two schools across the country.
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And like that, the bickering, the hating, the fighting never stops. I hate you, they write again and again, on notebook paper or textbooks. I hate you, they draw on their faces for the other to see when they return to their bodies in the morning. I hate you, the mumble between every breath until somewhere along the way, they realise there is so much beyond hatred contained in their hearts.
───────
And for years, on opposite sides of Inazuma, they learn to live each other’s lives so well that a part of the other permanently remains as a part of them.
───────
And years later, when another comet crashes and splinters along the outskirts of Tokyo, the knot that had intertwined their souls unravels and they no longer meet. Weeks pass, and they continue to write subtly aggressive—of course, with a little more affection than they used to be when they first got roped into this arrangement—messages in their notebooks, waiting for the other’s soul to enter their body.
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But they realise, after years of learning, and growing, and accepting reluctantly—perhaps childishly—they’d do it again.
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Again, and again.