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For the first few weeks, it was as though nothing had changed. Of course, there were always people coming up to her and asked her with wide eyes and an awe-filled voice about the details of what had happened in the War, and she’d mumble out a satisfactory answer before finding an excuse to dart away. There was the fact that everyone used Pendulums, as easily as though it had been something they were all born with.
But aside from that, home was the same. Her father was the same dorky nerd who got too excited about everything and gave hugs that were a little too tight. You Show was the same silly experience of blocking the notes that Yuya threw at her head and tapping on the kid’s desks to get them to pay attention. The city was the same sparkling contraption of glass and steel that soared above her head as she walked outside every morning. The air was the same; she was the same.
At least, that was what she told herself.
Rin surfaced first. If Yuzu had been expecting anyone, she had expected it to be Selena; after all, Yuzu had actually gotten to know Selena. She thought if it was anyone that reached out through her first, it would be the one she had been closest with.
It happened so quietly that she didn’t even realize it had happened, until she and her father were watching a movie and sharing a bowl of popcorn between their knees, and her father suddenly turned to her and asked her why she was crying.
Yuzu reached up to find the tears on her cheeks even though the movie wasn’t sad. It was funny, actually. But there was something about the warm, worn out couch and the feeling of her dad hugging her that just…
“I’ve never had a dad before,” Yuzu said before she realized the words weren’t hers.
She wasn’t sure if her father understood, but he wrapped his arms around her as she cried even harder, gripping at his shirt and pressing up against him and trying to memorize the warmth because, her brain told her, nothing like this could ever last.
Yes it can, she told Rin desperately. This can last.
Rin let out a cracked sob.
“Promise me?” she whispered.
Sometimes, after that, she would look in the mirror and see a girl with messy, self-cut green hair and hazel eyes instead of her own pink hair and blue eyes. Rin never quite wanted to look back at her. Yuzu wondered if she was nervous.
“Are you okay?” she whispered over the top of her coffee cup, quiet enough so that no one in the shop would hear her talking to herself.
Her brain shifted and she would feel tears in the corners of her eyes, just from the feel of the warm coffee spreading over her lips and the thick rich smell of the cream in it.
“I’m okay,” Rin said. “It’s—this is a lot. I don’t remember feeling warm like this in the winter.”
Yuzu would wish, then that she had been able to bring back Rin as herself, so that Yuzu could reach across the space and hug her and tell her it was going to be all right. She felt the clawing loneliness that occupied Rin’s heart as though it were her own—the tiny flinches that came with people getting a little too close, in case they were getting ready to hit her, or throw something. Fears that weren’t hers would spike behind her eyes every time she saw a police officer just standing there on the street. Rin almost broke down when Yuzu walked past them without them even looking.
But Rin was in her head, and the best that Yuzu could do was hug herself, and whisper to the feelings in her heart that they were safe now. They were all right. They weren’t going to be hungry or arrested or have to sleep huddled up in a cold garage under the least ratty blanket they could find ever again.
Ruri arrived next. It had been weeks since Yuzu had realized which of her feelings were Rin’s, and she thought that maybe she was just missing Ruri’s and Selena’s. She didn’t really know Ruri at all, after all—and if she was honest, she didn’t know Selena either. She didn’t know which of her strange sudden emotions came from which of them.
She was sitting in the park, winter finally fading from the world. It was still chilly, and her breath misted through her scarf, but it was all right. The cold made her feel a little sharper—less confused, about where she ended and Rin began.
A bird landed lightly on a nearby branch, and Yuzu found her eyes drawn to it.
She was halfway over to the tree before she realized she was moving almost by herself, her heart leaping with fascination. That was a bird she had never seen before.
And then she remembered that she had seen that bird before, almost every day of her entire life. But Ruri hadn’t.
You like birds? she thought.
Ruri’s heart thrummed along with Yuzu’s, excited.
“Very much.”
Yuzu took them to an arboretum. She hadn’t been there since she was a child, but she remembered the trees were always full of birds. Before then, she hadn’t really felt anything towards it.
But with Ruri in her heart, she couldn’t help but stand and stare up in the trees with awe. Her eyes caressed every little feather with absolute fascination. She could notice the minutest details in colors, the way each beak was shaped for a different purpose. She noticed, for the first time, the intelligence sparking in their eyes as they gave her passing glances. There were so many birds here that Ruri had never seen, and they spent an entire day walking through the trees, snapping pictures and looking through binoculars.
“Heartland never had anything like this,” Ruri said. “This is incredible!”
And then she got very quiet, and Yuzu felt her heart clench as though it were her own pain. Rin didn’t have a home to miss—but Ruri did. Yuzu’s eyes blurred with the sudden, overwhelming feeling of homesickness.
Do you want to visit Shun? We can do that, you know.
For a long moment, Ruri didn’t respond, and Yuzu almost thought that she had disappeared again.
“No…not right now. I don’t…”
Yuzu understood, because in that moment, she was Ruri. And it was too painful to think about seeing her brother. Her brother. He wasn’t Yuzu’s brother, but in that moment, Yuzu had to crouch down to the balls of her feet and hug her knees against her chest to stop herself from getting so sick that she threw up. She missed him, she missed him as though she had known Kurosaki Shun her entire life and not just seen him for a few, brief moments. She remembered a smile that she herself had never seen and it was all she could do to push her face into her knees and sob until the lights started to dim and the announcement came over the speakers that the arboretum was closing for the day.
Yuzu wondered if she’d ever be able to see Shun without sobbing.
Selena appeared last, and reluctantly. For a while, Yuzu didn’t realize that the stabs of irritation every time Yuzu messed something up were coming from Selena—she thought that was from herself.
But she failed another practice flip, landing heavily on the mat with the wind briefly rushing out of her, and for a moment, her brain went absolutely white with frustration. When she came to again, she was overwhelmed by the sudden, intense desire to punch something, to drive her fists against something until she wore herself to breathlessness, but there were no punching bags around and she wasn’t about to hit the wall.
Are you okay? she thought at the girls, wondering if this uncharacteristic anger was coming somehow from Ruri or Rin.
Selena was the one who answered.
“I just want to be able to do it.”
Yuzu realized then that she really had never known Selena at all.
If Rin was awe at simple home life, and Ruri was homesickness, Selena was all frustration. When Yuzu’s raised hand was skipped over during a lesson, Selena was the one who wanted to hit the desk so hard that no one would be able to ignore them. When Yuzu couldn’t quite get a combo right in practice, Selena wanted to throw her Duel Disk against the wall. When Ruri experienced a wash of homesickness, Selena would want to kick something. It was exhausting.
Why do you keep doing this? Yuzu thought desperately, her foot panging with pain from where she had impulsively kicked a bench.
Selena rumbled at the back of her head and Yuzu didn’t ask again. She didn’t have to. She was Selena.
And she was so, so frustrated that she wasn’t Selena anymore.
“You don’t get it,” Selena whispered, throat tight. “I can’t do what you’re doing. I can only watch. I’m you and I’m not. I don’t know what to do. I can’t do anything.”
Selena was all independence, or at least, a fierce desire for it—crossed with the fear of helplessness that she couldn’t escape. Yuzu would find herself waking up in a cold sweat some nights, getting tangled in the sheets as she stumbled across the room and forced the door open, just to reassure herself that it would open, and that there was no one standing outside to tell her to go back to sleep. Yuzu started sleeping with the door left open just to reassure her.
“I’m exhausted all the time.”
Yuya clutched his own coffee across the table from her and smiled weakly.
“I feel that,” he agreed.
Yuzu laid her head down on the cool table.
“I just want them to be okay, and happy,” she said. “But I don’t know that’s possible with them…like this.”
He nodded. If anyone understood, it would be him. She looked up at him over the tops of her arms, and immediately looked back down. It was too dizzying to look at him—she saw four different people all at once, some stronger than others. And then Rin and Ruri would both ache with the same loneliness and it would be enough to bring tears to Yuzu’s eyes again. She noticed that Yuya was having trouble looking at her, too. He kept staring out the window, or down at his cup.
“Do you get any sleep?” she asked, her voice hoarse. “You don’t look like you do.”
Yuya ran a hand down his face out of the corner of her eyes.
“Not really,” he said. “He’ll be mad if I tell you but…we have to sleep with the lights on. Yuuri panics in the dark.”
Yuzu’s breath caught. She almost wanted to ask. Selena drew back in her head and she felt a sudden sickness come over her. Selena knew what happened to kids who were disobedient in Academia, and they all knew what Yuuri was to Leo. Yuzu’s mind was already turning with memories that Selena didn’t want to acknowledge and ideas of what might be the reason for Yuuri’s panic. Yuzu didn’t ask.
“Rin wants to know how Yugo’s doing.”
“Yugo wants to tell Rin that he’s doing absolutely excellent, and that the food in the Pendulum Dimension is incredible.”
Yuzu giggled, but it was a hollow sound. Rin grumbled in the back of her head. It sounded like something Yugo would say if he was trying to make sure Rin wouldn’t worry. But, she had to agree, the food was really good.
Do you want to say anything to Yuto?
Ruri didn’t respond and she didn’t have to. The pain was too much and Yuzu swallowed through the stabbing in her heart. She wouldn’t ask again.
“Do you think there could have been a way to do it differently?” she asked. “I mean, do you think we could have found a way where it ended with all of us…not like this?”
Yuya just looked down at his coffee and didn’t answer. He didn’t have one, after all—and neither did she.
“Yuya,” she whispered, sliding her hand across the table without looking at him. He put his hand on top of hers immediately, their fingers twining together. She felt four lumps in her throat and four times the number of tears bubbling in her eyes from the touch. “Don’t disappear.”
“I won’t,” he promised.
She found herself in the CEO’s office of LDS. The massive ceiling and huge windows did nothing to intimidate her. She was far too tired to be intimidated.
“Do you think there’s a way to undo it?”
Reiji didn’t respond; he barely even looked up from his laptop. Yuzu stood quietly and patiently a few feet from his desk. He had let her up this far, so she knew he was willing to talk. Yuya had asked her to be patient with him. He’s still hurting too. He feels like this is his fault.
It’s not, though.
I know that. You know that. I don’t think he’s figure out how to know that.
Reiji finally looked up from his screen, eyes looking dull and haggard, dark circles under his eyes.
“Believe me when I say, Hiragi-san, I have…done everything in my power to research the possibility.”
He picked up a pencil and started to twirl it—a nervous habit. Yuzu didn’t know Reiji well enough to know if it was normal for him or not.
“But I don’t know if there’s a way. The bracelets and the En Cards that split you in the first place are gone. The only other option would be to reverse engineer Arc V. And you know what that machine needs to run.”
Ruri drew up and keened softly at the back of Yuzu’s head. Yuzu felt tears bubble in her eyes and for a moment, the echo of carpet bombs resonating over her mind and a vision of fire blossoming over her beautiful city. Not her city. Ruri’s city. Yuzu was starting to forget the lines between her and the others.
“I understand.”
She sat on the edge of her bed, in the dark, with the door closed, despite Selena’s nervousness. She needed it—needed the dark and silence and loneliness. Not that there was ever any loneliness, not with three other hearts beating alongside hers.
She swallowed through the lumps in her throat, eyes burning, and she wondered if this was just her own tears, or if they were all crying too. She couldn’t tell anymore. She looked at herself in the mirror across from her bed and she wasn’t sure who she was looking at.
“Who am I?” she said, and she wasn’t sure she recognized her own voice. “Who are we?”
She swallowed.
“Will all of you just…eventually fade into me, until I become Ray?” she whispered. “Is that what’s going to happen? Am I going to wake up one day and not be any of us anymore?”
“Yuzu, you’re worrying yourself,” Ruri said.
“I know I am, I know I am,” Yuzu gasped, pressing her hands to her mouth. She gasped for breath. “But I keep forgetting. I keep forgetting which is you and which is me—is it me or Selena when I get frustrated with math homework? When I wake up and forget where I am, wondering where the garage is, am I me or Rin? When I look at my family photos and start to wonder where Shun is, is that Ruri or me? Who am I??”
She gasped, choking on her own air.
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, all of you, I took it all away from you, and I’m the one acting like I’m the one in pain, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry—”
She was sobbing so hard that she fell off the bed, yelping as she hit the floor. Her father must have heard the thump, because suddenly, there was a knock at her door.
“Yuzu? Yuzu, are you okay in there?”
Yuzu choked back her sobs before he could hear them, shaking, hands pressed to her mouth and dizzy. Rin spiked with more tears, angry, upset tears—she was happy that there was someone to ask if they were okay, but she was trying, so so so hard, not to make Yuzu feel it. Oh god. She was the worst. She was complaining and bitching like this and making them feel awful for something they couldn’t control.
Yuzu let out the cries in spite of herself, and her father ripped the door open, letting the light pour in over her face. She barely felt it as he gathered her into his arms and hugged her so tightly that she couldn’t breathe. She heard him whispering, something soothing, but she couldn’t understand it.
“It’s not fair! It’s not fair! Why do we have to live like this?”
“I know, I know, baby, it’s hard, it’s really hard.”
“You don’t know, you don’t get it, y-you can’t!! I don’t know who I am—I don’t even know, I might not even be your daughter anymore—”
He hugged her even tighter.
“No,” he said, harshly this time. “No, you’re still my daughter. No matter how many of you are in there, all of you—you’re all safe here. No matter how you’ve changed, you’re still my little girl, no matter what.”
They were all crying now. Yuzu couldn’t even breathe with four people all sobbing through one throat.
“It’s not fair,” she gasped. “It’s not fair. We were real.”
He held her even closer.
“You still are.”
Selena still remembered the layout of Academia, so Yuzu let her mind take the lead. It was almost relaxing, watching herself move without having to do much to affect it. She couldn’t imagine, though, being like the others—completely helpless except to watch, all the time, through the eyes of someone else.
The school was empty, now, all the students have been released home, to reunite with family, or recover. There was some kind of program that Reiji had put in place to help deprogram Academia students, but Yuzu didn’t know much about it. Selena wanted to avoid it—and Ruri got panicked just seeing something that looked like an Academia uniform. She was not enjoying their time in Academia.
They weren’t surprised to find that Akaba Leo was still exactly where they had seen him last—hunched over the console of the old Arc V, though the machine itself was dead and lifeless.
“I hope you’re taking it apart.”
He flinched—he clearly hadn’t heard the doors open.
Yuzu felt nothing when she saw him turn to face her. She almost thought she would. She had the feelings of all the others. And Yuya often talked about the four of them getting sparks of memory from the echo of Zarc, even Zarc himself no longer seemed to exist. But Yuzu and the others felt nothing when they saw the face of the man who had supposedly been their father. No recognition. Not even the slightest bit of sadness.
He stared at them for a moment, face drawn and eyes dull. He looked as tired as Reiji had.
“I…” he started.
“I take that as, you’re not taking it apart.”
He looked away. Yuzu wondered who he was seeing right now. They stood there for a long time, silence increasing the copious distance between them. Yuzu didn’t make a move to get any closer. None of them had any love for the machine ahead of them.
“I…thought perhaps I could find a way to undo what I did.”
Irritation bubbled in Yuzu’s chest. She wasn’t sure who it was from—herself, the others? All of them? Her fists curled up at her sides.
“Oh really? Like you were doing the last time.”
He actually flinched. Yuzu felt like she should feel sorry. She didn’t though.
“He deserves it,” Rin said. Her voice was rumbly and angry and Yuzu could feel the agitation coursing through her veins.
“The last time you tried something like that, you ruined millions of peoples’ lives.”
“I…I thought…”
“Stop thinking,” Yuzu said, her voice suddenly rough and tight. “Stop thinking, for two fucking seconds. After everything that Ray did, how could you have thought for a second that she wanted to be dragged back like that? Did you know your daughter at all?”
He seemed to shrink, getting smaller and smaller with every word. She was trembling. Even Selena didn’t feel at all guilty about it. She just felt…surprised. Surprised that the figure who had been the pillar of strength all the life she remembered, who had been this figure that demanded obedience, could be brought down by just a few words.
“Why did you come?” he asked, sounding small and exhausted.
Yuzu looked up at the machine overhead, and she realized that she didn’t know. She turned around.
“Stop trying to fix things,” she said. “Stop trying to fix anything.”
She realized as she walked out of the room that those words hadn’t been hers.
They might have been Ray’s.
As she stepped back into the Pendulum Dimension, she felt the absence of her bracelet more than ever. Her wrist actually felt heavier, colder, without it.
“I’m sorry,” Ruri said suddenly.
Yuzu’s breath caught. She pressed a hand to her mouth.
What the hell for?
“We’re…we’re not helping,” Rin said. “Being here…it’s not helping you.”
“Shut up,” Yuzu whispered, her voice choked. “It’s not your fault.”
“But this isn’t easy for you…you’re the one who has to live this,” Selena said, awkwardly.
“You guys are living it too! It’s not just me dealing with it! Hell, I have it easier, I get to go home every day to my family and friends and keep living and you—you all have to just watch! I…if only b-before we came out of the machine, I had tried harder, done something better so that—”
As though she were real, Yuzu thought she felt Ruri put her arms around Yuzu from behind, hugging her close with her head resting on Yuzu’s shoulder.
“You don’t have to do this alone,” she said.
She felt Rin, next, her tense, toned arms awkwardly wrapping around Yuzu’s shoulders, squeezing her tightly.
“This is hard, for all of us,” she said, choked. “But Ruri’s right. We’re in this together.”
Selena hesitated for just a moment, and then, Yuzu could almost feel her hand on her shoulder, patting awkwardly.
“We’ll figure this out,” Selena said. “I mean…at least we can figure it out together.”
Yuzu swallowed through her tears, pressing the heels of her hands into her eyes.
“Do you really think so?” she said. “Do you really think…we can make this work?”
Ruri squeezed her tighter, like a breath of wind swirling around her arms.
“This world is full of so many mysterious things,” she said. “The fact that we exist is one of them.”
“Do you think that…do you think we’ll be like this forever?”
“If we are…there are worse people we could get stuck with, right?” Rin joked.
“Yeah, we could have gotten stuck with Sawatari as a headmate for all eternity,” Selena said. “Think of what a nightmare that would be.”
Yuzu actually giggled, her voice choked. She swallowed.
“I’m glad it’s you guys, if it had to be someone,” she said.
“I’m glad it’s you, if it had to be someone,” Selena agreed. “I trust you, Yuzu.”
“Same,” said Rin. “And hey, at least I’m not sleeping in gutters anymore, right? Could be worse.”
“Could always be worse,” Yuzu said, voice trembling, but she found herself smiling.
She licked her dry lips, and let her hands fall from her eyes. Above the city skyline, the sun was rising. She had to pull one arm up over her eyes to block out the glare, but she could still see the glimmer and glitter of sunlight dancing across the shining buildings.
Quietly, she put her hands down at her sides, and she thought she could almost imagine the feeling of the girls putting their hands in hers. It was her imagination, but it felt good.
“Maybe someday, we’ll be able to hug each other for real,” she whispered, looking up at the sun rising over their heads. “But until then…let’s…let’s try this out. Together.”
“Together.”
She stepped down from the steps leading to the dimensional portal, and walked towards the sunrise.
Or rather, all four of them walked towards the sunrise. Together.