Archive of Our Own

“Angela,” her mother calls out from the kitchen, “it looks like you’re going to spend your spring in Japan.”

Those twelve words are enough to divert her attention away from her sketch.

She purses her lips. Now that she thinks about it, it’s been eight years — it’s about that time.

“Did obaa-chan tell you she wanted me to come?” she calls back.

The savory scent of pancit palabok drifts into her room — warm shrimp and green onion tantalizing her senses. She sets down her charcoal, swings her legs off her bed, and shuffles into the kitchen.

Her mother’s brow is knit in intense concentration as she drains the noodles into the sink. “I didn’t talk to her myself. She called your father and — well, I’m sure you can imagine how she swayed him.”

Angie somewhat robotically begins taking dishes and silverware out of the cabinet. She can absolutely imagine how that conversation went, she thinks with a frown.

“But how do you feel, anak? Do you even want to go?”

It’s a fair question. When she was eight and visited Japan, all she did was cry. And cry. And cry. Ad infinitum.

Angie twists a tendril of hair around her finger as she reaches for the salt grinder with her free hand.

“Angela,” her mother says gently, setting the strainer aside and looking at her with a potent mix of pity and compassion. “It might help you...forget.”

Her knuckles go white around the salt grinder.

Forget.

“When you put it like that, nay...” she murmurs, “I might just give it a try.”

When she arrives at the airport, she feels just as foreign as she did when she was a child.

Angie collects her luggage with a trembling hand, feebly attempting to convince herself that people aren’t staring at her tan skin and light hair.

Their gazes tattoo the word outsider all over her skin.

She loads herself into a train destined for Ikebukuro, suitcase in hand and rucksack slung over her shoulder, and bites her lip in an effort to halt the tears threatening to spill down her cheeks. She teeters on the precipice of panic all the way through the connecting train to Kiyose.

Fake smiles don’t come easily when she shows up on the porch of her grandmother’s traditional house later that night, but she finds it in herself to front it.

“Look at how big you’ve gotten, Angie-chan!” her grandmother exclaims. “And your birthday is in two weeks! Come, come. Let’s have some tea. You should relax after such a long journey.”

Angie laughs nervously as she follows her into the house — as if she’s ever been able to relax for a moment in her life.

Despite the tea, despite the warm bath, despite her grandmother’s reassuring grin, despite the soft yellow glow of the garden lamp just outside her window—

Angie’s heart pounds against her ribcage that night.

Her grandmother essentially gives her free rein for how to spend her days in Kiyose.

(“Just be back before supper. And don’t run around with the neighborhood boys — they’ll eat a pretty girl like you right up.”)

She appreciates the city’s relatively rustic nature despite its adjacency to much more metropolitan areas. There are only a few people scattered about in the main areas of the parks, and there are plenty of places for her to sit and simply be.

Angie ambulates along an isolated path near the grassy bank of the Yanase River. The landscape has woken up from winter’s frosty slumber with gusto; she can’t stop admiring the trees bursting with pink and white flowers, the vibrantly verdant riverbank, the perfectly blue sky above her.

For a moment, she forgets.

She comes upon a copse as the path veers further away from human habitation. Weaving her way through the trees and shrubbery, she emerges on the other side with only a few pinpricks from errant thorns. On the other side appears to be a small, narrow tributary of the river, with a lush bank and a large oak tree towering over the area.

Angie is instantaneously in love with this pocket of the riverside. She scurries down the incline — wobbling as she occasionally loses her footing — towards the edge of the river.

After gauging her surroundings, she lies on the grass and her line of vision is full of brilliant blue. The unease escapes her lungs with every exhale.

She closes her eyes; she could stay in a place like this forever.

Time seems to cease all motion as Angie’s mind begins to flirt with the edges of sleep. The warm weather and the susurrus of the flowing stream lull her into a pleasant half-awake, half-dream state.

“Who are you?”

Her eyes fly open.

The voice — masculine and threatening — makes the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. It becomes even more insidious against the backdrop of silence.

Frozen in place for a fraction of a second, Angie does eventually manage to sit up. As much as she’d love nothing more than to simply sink into the earth, she turns her head to look at the voice’s source. Standing at the foot of the thicket, not more than a few meters away, is one of the tallest men she’s ever seen — disorderly hair flowing down to the middle of his back, a gaze so piercing that it halts the blood in every one of her veins.

His glasses seem egregiously out of place, as do the formal button-down white shirt and black pants.

“Oh, um, I was — well, you know,” Angie sputters, gesturing wildly to compensate for the abrupt absence of all linguistic ability. She can only hope that she doesn’t look as intimidated as she feels; this man looks like he can smell fear, and not in the figurative sense.

He starts to approach her wordlessly, his ruthless stare speaking for itself, and her next course of action is a foregone conclusion.

“S-Sorry. I’ll leave,” she says hastily, swallowing the urge to contest him. This is a public place (she thinks?) if slightly off the beaten path. She rises to her feet and clutches her sketchpad to her chest with trembling hands before walking backwards towards the copse.

“Good,” the man says with a scowl. “Maybe think twice before wanderin’ off where you don’t belong.”

Well, she certainly will now. With buckling knees, Angie absconds into the trees.

She feels his gaze burning into her back long after she has left.

“Angie-chan, what’s wrong? You look white as death!” her grandmother laments when she opens the screen door and crosses the threshold into the living room.

She throws herself face down on the floor and groans. She can hear her grandmother setting down her book in concern. Angie lifts her head and sighs.

“I think you were right about the boys around here, obaa-chan.”

Against her better judgment, Angie goes back to the same place a few days later. Contrary to her nature, the de facto verboten quality of the spot she’s discovered only makes it more appealing. She traipses across the grass, eyes darting around and scanning the panorama for any sign of life. All she can see is a few fish shimmying along the river.

She breathes a sigh of relief and produces her sketchpad and materials from her bag — pastels, pencils, charcoals, watercolor pens. She approaches the river’s edge and scopes out the subject of her next piece, seeing as how she didn’t have the opportunity last time.

Drawing the river itself would be cliché. She’s never been very skilled at landscapes, anyway.

(As if she’s skilled at any of this.)

She shakes that thought off and continues looking. There’s a stray tabby cat on the other side of the river, but it’s too far away to accurately capture. She turns her attention towards the large, low-hanging blade of grass next to her that dangles just above the water — on it is a single mayfly.

The humble mayfly. She remembers reading in her biology textbook that they have the shortest life cycle of any living thing in the world.

What better way to mourn it than to preserve it forever?

Angie reaches for her pencil and starts sketching the body and wings of the bug, alternating her gaze between the mayfly and her sketchpad. The backdrop becomes a blur as she traces the costa of the wing with utmost devotion.

“You again?”

Her muscles tense at the sharp words slicing through the silence. She shuts her eyes tightly; her reaction is instantaneous. What made her think that this was a good idea?

(She imagines her poor grandmother finding her body floating face down in the river.)

“Are you fucking deaf? Or are you just stupid? Or both?” The grass rustles behind her. She closes her eyes even tighter.

A shadow engulfs her.

“Or maybe you’re a fan of danger,” the voice continues, rougher and deeper than before.

She swallows hard and looks up. Suddenly emboldened, she frowns.“Well, this is a public space...I’m not here to bother anyone.”

She’s about to give out under his leaden stare, but he sighs and turns away just before she does.

“Fine. Whatever. Just don’t snitch,” he warns lowly before taking a drag of the cigarette he’s holding.

She never intended to. In fact, she pegged him as being more than old enough to smoke. If that’s what this was all about, then the man (boy?) really was making a big deal out of nothing.

Angie lets out a breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding.

“You sound pretty fuckin’ weird, by the way. Where you from?” It’s more of a demand than a question.

She twiddles her thumbs. “The Philippines.”

“The Philippines,” he repeats. He has no idea where that is and he makes no effort to conceal that fact. Angie’s lip twitches.

She doesn’t feel compelled to continue the conversation after that. He seems to feel similarly judging from the way they fall into mutual silence.

Her pencil hovers just above the paper.

She’s never going to get anything done this way.

Angie abandons her opus du jour and settles for doodling, her eyes wandering from the cloud of smoke lingering in the air down to the boy’s unruly hair and his austere eyes.

He gets up and stalks away after a while, but not before tossing a dirty glance in her direction.

She shudders — the sting of his gaze is worse than any bug bite.

He’s officially given up on trying to get her to leave. Angie will mark that down as a victory, thank you.

The man (boy?) still comes by every now and then and sits perpendicular to her, further away from the actual river. He never says anything to her and hardly even looks her in the face — a far cry from his prior approach. All he ever does is fish cigarettes out of his pocket and light one after the other, sighing and staring at the dragonflies skittering across the river’s surface.

This strange routine pacifies her in the way that only constancy can. She’s not afraid of him anymore, though the silence makes her feel vaguely awkward.

Angie tries not to think too much about it (an exercise in futility for someone like her).

She sketches the tail of the mayfly, quietly lamenting the loss of her model.

It doesn’t escape her attention over the next few days that they’ve begun moving closer to one another despite maintaining the silence. She wonders if he’s planning on murdering her in such a secluded place — in which case, she has no true qualms aside from his inexpedience.

Angie wonders if she should try to start a conversation, but the thought alone makes her want to reach for that bottle she keeps in her backpack.

On this particular day, he shows some mercy and initiates.

“Why are you here?”

She looks up from her sketchpad, though she keeps him relegated to her peripheral vision. She wasn’t expecting that question.

“Um, well, I thought — I thought we went over this.”

“No. I mean, why are you in Japan?”

“O-Oh. I’m visiting my grandmother,” she replies quietly.

The boy doesn’t say anything, seemingly satisfied with her answer.

“I don’t think I ever introduced myself,” Angie says to the grass beneath her. The prospect of looking him in the eye is still too terrifying for her.

“Okay.” His disinterest is discordant music to her ears.

“My name’s Angela Yonaga, but most people call me Angie.”

He gives a noncommittal nod. “Gonta Gokuhara.”

“Nice...to meet you, Gokuhara-kun.”

He glances at her in vague acknowledgement but refrains from responding. Is this going to be a trend? She’s almost impressed that she’s come across someone more tightlipped than her.

Angie doesn’t know what else to say. The way the orange light of the setting sun reflects off the rapids tells her that she should go home soon. She gingerly packs her things away, trying to pretend that he isn’t watching her.

She rises to her feet and starts making her way to the foot of the thicket. “I have to go now, Gokuhara-kun. Maybe I’ll see you later?”

The way he squares his shoulders and looks away tells her that it’s a(n uncomfortable) promise.

If nothing else, he acts the slightest bit more casual around her now that he appears to be confident she won’t tip off the authorities.

Today, he lies on his side and twirls the cigarette between his fingers as he watches her draw.

“What’s that supposed to be?” he asks, sounding almost aggressively disinterested.

She turns her head to answer him and opens and closes her mouth; she actually doesn’t know the Japanese word for it.

He raises his eyebrows at her expectantly and heat pools in her cheeks.

“Oh, you know,” she stammers, “it’s a bug — it only lives for a day, they live around the water?”

He gives her a blank stare.

“Uh — they look kind of like mosquitos.”

Still nothing. Angie starts to break out into a cold sweat. She looks around and finally sees one hovering somewhat nearby and frantically points to it.

“It’s that thing!”

“Oh. You meant mayflies,” he says with a hint of condescension.

“Was I really that bad at describing it that you couldn’t think of it until now?” she asks sheepishly.

“No. It was just fun to watch you struggle.”

Angie is sure that her blush has reached the tips of her ears. She should’ve known that he was the mean-spirited type.

“So you’re into artsy bullshit,” he says, quickly changing the subject.

“Oh, I’m not — I’m not...very good at it,” she mutters, shame permeating every word.

He quirks an eyebrow. “I didn’t ask if you were good at it.”

Angie twiddles her thumbs.

“Keep going,” he commands.

It’s oddly encouraging; she doesn’t hesitate.

Their quiet rendezvous have become an almost daily ritual, excepting the rainy days sprinkled over the course of the passing weeks. Some days he shows up in his school uniform. Most days, however, he’s dressed in laborer’s garb, face marred by dirt and sweat.

Typically, he’ll march over to her spot by the river, whip out a cigarette, and start ranting about his daily tribulations. He talks at her rather than to her — the contrite at the confession booth. Undeterred by this, she’ll listen and nod when appropriate, sprinkling in ‘wow’s and ‘that’s terrible’s when she’s feeling particularly empathetic.

Soon, they begin having conversations about things other than his day at work. They talk about religion (something she’s decidedly sour on, being the daughter of a former missionary), the future (how they have none), school (a mutual loathing). She still needs help in the Japanese vocabulary department for abstract topics, but he doesn’t string her along like he did last time and fills in when necessary.

He’s still relatively reserved compared to her; there’s always a deeper truth lurking beneath everything he says. He’s short and clipped and doesn’t impart more than necessary. There are long stretches of silence between them, just as before, but they aren’t characterized by the same discomfort.

Her new friend (she hesitates to regard him with the term) is bewilderingly opaque, even in the midst of talking about the most revealing topics. In a way, that’s what she likes about him. He’s complex without being vexing.

Some days he looks exceptionally pale or tired, and she knows that look from anywhere — it’s the visage of the half-starved.

Yet, Angie doesn’t ask questions. Questions aren’t a part of this arrangement. They’re strangers wearing masks — and it’s liberating.

She feels good.

“Goodness, Angie-chan! What are you doing so early?” her grandmother calls out shortly after Angie drops a large ladle on the ground. She enters the kitchen while Angie scrambles to regroup.

“N-Nothing, obaa-chan,” she replies, still huddled on the floor.

“Cooking? Why didn’t you just say so, sweet child?” Her grandmother laughs and comes over and assesses Angie’s progress, wisps of grey hair falling from her bun. “Ah, I see you’re making something from back home.”

“I’m trying,” Angie says with a sigh. She brushes herself off and dejectedly washes the ladle in the sink.

“It seems to me that you’re doing a fine job. What’s the occasion?”

Angie had practiced explanations in her head, but none of the candidates seem appropriate now.

“I...well, I met someone who...might appreciate it.”

“That’s my Angie-chan, always thinking of others.”

That description hurts to hear, untrue as it is.

“I’d offer to help, but I think you’d prefer to figure it out yourself,” her grandmother continues before beaming and heading back into the living room.

Angie stares into the simmering pot of soup and wonders why — truly, why — she’s doing this.

It makes her feel useful — as if she’s making some contribution, however small, to the cosmic wellbeing of the universe. Something at the back of her mind knows that can’t possibly be the case; her infinitesimal existence on this infinite planet couldn’t possibly do anything that matters.

(But she likes to pretend.)

Angie half-jogs to the riverside, containers of fresh puchero and miso sinigang in hand. As the sun beats down on her, she starts to think that this level of urgency is unnecessary. The food’s going to stay warm no matter what.

He’s there before her — a rarity — and he’s wearing his school uniform today. (It doesn’t suit him, she thinks.) He acknowledges her arrival with a small nod.

“I brought you something,” she proclaims as she marches down the incline and toward where he’s sitting. She holds out the container of puchero.

“How sweet,” he says flatly, appraising the containers. “You shouldn’t have.”

“Well, I made too much and I wanted you to have the rest.”

“Really? You fucking pity me that bad?”

Angie will surely get whiplash from how quickly he snaps back to his frosty self again. She had somewhat anticipated this reaction, but it doesn’t discourage her. (For once.)

“It’s not pity,” she says emphatically, eyebrows knitting in frustration. “I know you don’t need it. But I want you to have it.”

He groans.

She’s going to stubbornly proffer her cooking to him if it’s the last thing she does.

It was, after all, a labor of love — in a manner of speaking.

Gonta catches on.

“Fine. Only so you leave me alone, though,” he grumbles, snatching the top container. “What is it, anyway?”

“Try it first.”

He obliges, snatching one of the wooden spoons she brought with her and popping the lid off. There’s no trace of the artifice of pride that was there just a few moments ago. He examines the stew before spooning it into his mouth experimentally.

She wonders how she must look right now.

“Wow.”

He doesn’t say more than that, but the elation that blossoms in her chest takes her by surprise.

He eats in silence, clearly savoring her cooking, while she digs into the sinigang. After a while, the ambient sounds of dining cease, prompting her to look up. He’s staring at her.

She blinks. “Are you okay? Is it bad?”

“No,” he says, exasperated. “You just look...really happy. It’s weird.”

“Do I?” She chuckles nervously and averts her gaze toward the tree across the river. “I’m just glad you like it. I thought you would.”

“Good to know you’re confident about that much.”

Something urges her to be transparent about her true intentions. She inhales shakily.

“I just wanted to do something for you,” she stammers, perhaps a bit too frank.

He goes silent, and when she looks back, his expression is inscrutable.

“Well...” he mutters, “thanks.”

She takes her sketchbook out and silently works. He peers over every now and then. This routine has become far too comfortable for her.

When the sunset dyes the riverside orange, she packs her things away, including the (empty) containers, and gets up to leave, as does he. They cross through the forest and out to the sidewalk in silence, but before they go their separate ways, he turns to her.

“Why?”

Here in the sunset, with a genuine question in his eyes — she can’t help but think this is how she likes him best.

“I told you,” she says, not quite meeting his gaze. “I wanted to do something for you.”

His brows knit together in vague dissatisfaction, which initially makes her panic, but his face loses some of its tenseness and he looks — happy? Sad? It’s a strange mix of the two, but it doesn’t look bad.

“Okay.” He sighs. “See you tomorrow.”

When Angie walks home that day, a warmth radiates from her heart, extending to every part of her —

and when she arrives on the doorstep of her grandmother’s house, she’s glowing, glowing, glowing.

She finds herself forgetting all about home. Forgetting about everything that happened to her.

“Oh, Angie-chan,” her grandmother says one day at breakfast, “you look so much happier these days! You’re not the same girl who came here in March.”

“You think so, obaa-chan?” Angie responds with a sheepish smile.

Her grandmother nods, stirring her miso soup thoughtfully. “Yes, yes. I’m glad I insisted that you come here. I knew it would be good for a sensitive growing girl like you.”

Angie peels her orange, smile still on her face.

“You ever see DanganRonpa?”

The question comes unbidden, spoken around a cigarette on an overcast day.

“I saw it once. It just made me sad,” she mutters. “Watching all those people throw their lives away.”

“Maybe their lives weren’t worth livin’.”

She gasps, scandalized. He rolls his eyes.

“I think I’m gonna try, anyway.”

Her heart skips a beat.

“Don’t do that,” Angie implores. “Money isn’t worth it.”

Just from analyzing the subtle shift in his features, she can tell that there’s something he wants to say, but he’s holding himself back.

He exhales; tendrils of smoke slither up into the atmosphere. He deflects the topic away from himself.

“There’s gotta be something that’d make you go for it. Something. What is it?”

She wants to pretend to have the higher moral ground, but it’s true: there’s something that would entice her to sign her life away.

“For me,” Angie begins, tapping her chin in thought, “the only reason I’d try to get on that show is so that I could...”

She tenses and trails off. She doesn’t want to think about that word, not when she’s been doing this well.

“Were you gonna finish that sentence sometime this year?” he interjects.

She doesn’t want to say that word. She hopes, for all his lack of subtlety, that he can glean what she means from her expression.

(There is a glimmer of understanding in his eyes, she thinks.)

Angie doesn’t realize what’s happening to her until she starts to feel disappointed when he isn’t there and when she can’t fall asleep from the anticipation of seeing him the next day.

Situated in the futon of her grandmother’s guest room, her heart pounds against her chest.

(Not unpleasantly, though; the beat of pumping blood lulls her to sleep as she envisions harsh red eyes and a voice that defies decorum.)

“You’ve been acting weird. Weirder than usual. If that’s even possible, y’know.”

He is sometimes more astute than she gives him credit for.

She sets her sketchbook down. (Her work is almost done, she thinks absently.)

Should she say it? She’s never been given to honesty, but he somehow coaxes it out of her.

“I just...like you a lot, Gokuhara-kun,” she confesses quietly.

He presses his lips into a thin line, and his eyes are as harsh as ever.

“You don’t know anything about me, Yonaga.”

“That’s not — ”

“Yeah, it’s true,” he interjects sharply. “Because if you did, you wouldn’t be here right now. You would’ve left a long time ago.”

The outburst is enough to give her pause, but it doesn’t test her resolve.

“You might be right,” she admits. “But I don’t care. I know what I’ve seen, and I like it.”

She moves closer to him and slides her hand (comically minuscule in comparison) over his, interlocking their digits. Cold sweat lines the back of her neck, but this feels like the right thing to do.

His eyes widen and lose their prior hostility.

“Is this okay?” she asks tentatively.

The surprise hasn’t entirely faded from his features, but he nods with solemn certainty.

It feels unnatural, but neither of them make any motion to move.

“I guess you’re all right too, Yonaga,” he admits after a prolonged silence, and though she can’t see his face, she can hear a hint of vulnerability. “You still don’t know me, though.”

“You don’t really know me either.”

“You’re right.”

“I like it better this way,” she murmurs.

“...I agree.”

The threat of June hangs heavy over her head — specifically, June 3rd. Six more days.

The distant look in his eyes makes her sad. She wonders if she looks the same way.

(An idea, incipient and insidious, ferments in the back of her mind.)

He isn’t here today, and it’s ultimately for the best despite her disappointment.

She glides her pastels across the page in a furious bid to finish this piece. The mayfly that served as her inspiration has been dead for months now.

The finished product is nothing short of pathetic. All this effort, all this time — for something that only brings her shame.

Angie bites down on her lip so hard it bleeds — the plates of her soul crack and collide.

A symbol — a confirmation — of everything she long knew to be true, but denied.

Angie crumples the paper up — savoring the feeling of every crease between her fingers — and tosses it into the river. The lively waters swallow it nigh instantly, as if accepting a sacrifice.

Her heart beats wildly against her ribcage; it feels good to watch it disappear.

She’s been doing so well. This is just a setback.

(It can’t be a setback if I never left the starting line, she thinks.)

She fishes another piece of paper out of her jacket pocket and makes a decision.

Angie almost doesn’t want to get out of the bed the day before she leaves. The sky is overcast, though it isn’t supposed to rain until the next morning.

She emerges from her futon and crawls, bleary-eyed, over to the window and takes in the mass of grey clouds enveloping the sunlight. It must still be the early morning. Her chest hurts.

Angie gives a saturnine greeting to her grandmother on the way out.

The summer breeze is terribly cold for it being June. She rubs the goosebumps on her arms as she drags her feet along the river path. It takes her twice as long to arrive at her destination than it usually does.

When she does, he’s there. She knew he’d be.

“Didn’t think you’d come,” Gonta says plainly. He looks tired — far more than usual. She doesn’t think any amount of puchero could fix it, and the thought is enough to bring a small, sad smile to her face.

Angie gingerly crosses the threshold and sits, cross-legged, next to him. “Why wouldn’t I?”

“Don’t know. It’s just a crappy day out.” He looks at her, and though she’s gotten good at reading his expressions, the note of uncertainty in his eyes flummoxes her. “I thought you’d spend your last day doing something else.”

“No way,” she replies (a little too quickly).

“Okay. Calm down, Yonaga.”

She sighs and hands him a package of melon bread she had in her bag before opening one herself. It doesn’t have the nutritional value someone as lumbering as him requires, but it’s the gesture that counts.

“Where’s your drawing?”

“I...I finished it, but I lost it.” The lie is thick and distasteful on her lips, but he looks at her with something vaguely resembling pity and says nothing more.

She knows he has somewhere to be — work, school, somewhere — but the hours go by and he doesn’t make any motion to leave as she tells him everything she failed to over the course of these months.

And she tells him — her fears, her hopes, the things she came to Japan to forget. She doesn’t expect him to understand or care, but it’s the first time she’s breathed life into these things about herself and they feel — real.

Her bare emotion has apparently stirred something within him, as his expression goes cloudy.

“There’s a lot I wanna tell you, Yo — ”

“Just call me Angie,” she interrupts. “And...it’s okay. You don’t have to tell me anything.”

It’s selfish. It’s misleading. In the end, she supposes she was just using him. She knew all along he had things he wanted to tell her — he didn’t need to say that aloud.

“It’s getting dark, Gokuhara-kun. I should go home soon,” she continues.

He furrows his brow in reluctance, hesitantly letting her hand go. She makes to rise to her feet — she can’t do much else but look at him apologetically.

She has to drink this in — she’ll never be here, with him, again.

Even if she was using him, she cared. She did.

“Well, I guess that’s it,” she whispers in a paltry attempt to mollify herself.

“Guess it is.”

They stand there, fixating their gaze on the gentle flow of the river in a desperate ploy to avoid looking at each other. Said ploy only serves to intensify the heat in her face; the tension is palpable. She’s never been good at goodbyes.

Angie chances a glance at him when she’s sure he won’t notice, and to her (mild) surprise, he looks just as flustered and frustrated as she imagines she looks. It’s not his typical impenetrable mask of stern neutrality.

“I don’t want to leave yet,” she mumbles, if only to dismantle the ticking time bomb of silence that has situated itself between them.

He laughs humorlessly. “What, are you just not gonna go back home?”

“I meant right now.”

“Oh.” She almost wants to giggle at the obvious embarrassment in his voice, but he collects himself quickly. “So don’t leave, yeah?”

“Okay.” It’s humiliating, the way she acquiesces so willingly.

She sits down again and he follows suit — neither of them looking away from the tranquil river. She keeps her eyes firmly on the mayflies flying languidly just above the water’s surface.

Yet.

She realizes she’s probably never going to see this strange boy again after she leaves tomorrow morning, so she drums up some artificial courage and turns her head to look at him. He’d been studying her too, it seems — unapologetically, at that.

“I’m happy I came here and met you. I’m...really happy.”

The words break free of her lips before she has the chance to even process the full depth of their meaning, and she wants nothing more than to sink into the damp earth at this very moment. Why does she always have to admit these things first?

His face is impossibly red and she has no idea what he’s going to do or say next. (In the end, she supposes that’s something she appreciates about him.)

“Y — Angie, if you — ” Gonta begins, eyes wide with something akin to desperation, before sighing and cutting himself off. “Never mind. Just stay.”

Angie swallows hard around the lump in her throat. She plays with the grass, tearing it out in strands, before moving closer to him and tentatively laying her head in his lap.

“I’ll come back and see you somehow. Just don’t forget about me until then, okay?” It’s a cruel lie.

He runs his fingers through her hair.

They stay like that until the sunrise beckons her home.

Angie relives the last three months over and over behind her eyes on the plane.

It wasn’t as though it was a particularly exciting trip. All she did was talk to a weird boy by a riverside every day and (attempt to) draw. She was home by sundown almost every day. She would chat with her grandmother before curling up in her futon, eagerly awaiting the dawn, and repeating it all over again. She didn’t go anywhere fun, she didn’t explore the city.

No, it wasn’t a thrilling trip by any means.

(Just stay.)

It isn’t until she feels something warm and wet flowing down her cheeks that she comes to a startling conclusion.

She doesn’t want to forget.

“How do you feel, Angela?” her mother asks upon picking her up from the airport. “Was it...good for you?”

Angie stares out the window of the bus — she doesn’t have the guts to look her mother in the eye.

“Yeah. I think it was,” she mutters.

The sun hurts her eyes.

Three weeks after returning to the Philippines, while a phantom caress still lingers on her scalp, Angie gets a phone call from a foreign number just before she leaves for school.

“Good morning. I’d like to speak to Angie Yonaga?” The voice on the other end belongs to an obviously exuberant young woman.

“Y-Yes, this is her.”

“I’m very glad I was able to get in contact with you, Yonaga-san. I’m from Team Danganronpa, and we’ve just reviewed your application...”