Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

i.

Umi and Honoka kissed, once.

It wasn't a big deal, or if it was, Umi could never discern that the taste of Honoka's strawberry chapstick was meant to hold any weight in her mind. It did, in no uncertain terms, but whether it was supposed to was another question entirely.

It had been a blustery autumn evening somewhere in the depths of their senior year, a time taken up by college applications and existential questions about where their lives would lead them. Umi didn’t remember the rest of the day very well; classes had stretched on for an eternity as they so often seemed to back then, until the bell finally rang to signal their freedom. Kotori opted to stay after school, however, eager to get some stitching done in peace. That was how Umi and Honoka had been left to make their way back alone.

"Are you warm enough? You're not dressed for the weather," Umi fretted aimlessly. She wasn't sure if Honoka was even that underdressed, but it seemed right to worry all the same, or at the very least to fill a silence that hung in the air along with the leaves.

“I’m fine,” Honoka replied with a laugh. She pointed to a loosely knit scarf that draped over her shoulders. “You don’t need to worry, Kotori just knitted this for me the other day. It’s cozy!”

“Oh.” The word hung in the air limply as Umi stared at Honoka. “It, uh, looks nice on you.” She felt as if she should have been able to conjure up something a bit more sincere, but it was just a scarf, so she held her tongue.

“Really?” Honoka looked down at the scarf curiously, palming the loose fabric with a hand. “Well, I guess Kotori would know how to make me look good,” she remarked with a small chuckle, undoubtedly thinking back to the myriad of school idol outfits Kotori had designed for them. She paused, as if in contemplation, before she spoke up again. “She’s been working really hard recently, hasn’t she?”

It seemed an innocuous comment to make, but Umi knew there was more to it than that, a lingering insecurity hiding somewhere between Honoka’s words. After all, these walks shared between the two of them had slowly shifted from exception to norm.

“It’s a busy time of year, Honoka. She’s just making sure she’ll get into a good school.”

“Did she tell you she’s applying to schools in Paris?”

Umi frowned, despite herself. “Yeah.”

They were quiet for a moment, the sound of soles against concrete and the faint chirping of birds the only sounds that pierced the ambient noise of the city. Finally, Umi turned back to Honoka, eyes searching for some unspoken thought she might glean from the way Honoka tottered to and fro along her path.

“Are you okay with that?”

Honoka laughed, though any humor in the sound felt entirely hollow. The question, it seemed, had already been answered, though Honoka at least made an effort to deflect. “She’s going to be all rich and famous and give me free clothes, how couldn’t I be?” Her voice carried an unearned exuberance that masked something else.

Umi pursed her lips in concern. “This is serious, Honoka.”

“I know, I just…” Honoka’s voice trailed off into a sigh, her false grin melting into something more genuine, a weary smile. “I want her to do things that make her happy. She deserves that.”

“She hasn’t said anything, but I can tell she’s been fretting about it. I think she’s scared of…” Umi’s voice trailed off, not quite wanting to make the connection herself.

“What happened last time? That was my fault,” Honoka replied. “We won’t make those same mistakes. Or… I won’t, anyways.”

“You’ll support her, then?” Honoka nodded, and a wave of relief washed over Umi. “I’m glad. I’m not even sure she’d go if you don’t actively encourage her to. She cares so much about what you think, Honoka.”

“I mean, it’s not like I want her to be so far away,” Honoka replied in uncharacteristically measured words. “But I still wonder if it was right of me to ask her to stay before. I know she wanted to, but… I don’t know,” she lamented more to herself than Umi. Her gaze fell to the ground, eyes pensive. “Because of me, her dream had to wait. I still feel guilty about that.”

Honoka being so self-aware was a strange thing for Umi to bear witness to, enough that it felt like a minor miracle in of its own, and she felt a pang of pride in her heart. Umi leaned closer to give Honoka a playful bump on the shoulder as they continued to meander along the busy Akihabara streets.

“Love Live was also her dream, Honoka, because it was yours.”

Honoka looked up at Umi for a brief moment. Hope flickered in her eyes, and for the faintest moment it almost seemed like they were backlit, brighter than even the evening sun overhead. “Really?”

“Yeah. She’s lucky to have a friend like you, you know. She was happy following you.” Honoka smiled in reply, and they fell silent again for a brief moment. “And… so was I,” Umi added quietly, eyes averted from Honoka and a hint of rose on her cheeks. They had taken a turn down a sleepy sidestreet that led towards both of their houses, flashy technology stores giving way to quaint storefronts, a side of their neighborhood that few tourists ever seemed to notice.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen,” Umi continued after a brief but pregnant silence, “but we’ll make it work. Together. Right?”

“Hey, Umi-chan?” Honoka slowed to a stop, lacing her fingers together behind her back and tottering from side to side absently. Umi halted as well, turning around and looking at Honoka with eyebrows raised and mouth parted ever so slightly. Perhaps her last comment had been too much, she worried.

Finally, her mouth opened to form a reply. “Is everything okay?”

Honoka nodded, a soft “yes” escaping her lips as she took a swift step that closed the distance between the two of them. She simply stood there, gazing into the depths of Umi’s eyes with an expression that Umi couldn’t quite fathom. Her heart beat ever faster, a steady succession of thumps in her chest keeping time as the silence lingered.

And then her heart skidded to a halt as Honoka leaned in and planted a peck on her lips with no forewarning. The kiss was brief and hurried, yet as natural as the cold bluster of the air around them. Even if Honoka's lips hadn't lingered, the sensation and touch and taste and that damn chapstick permanently etched themselves into every crack of Umi's lips all the same. 

"I want to stay like this forever," Honoka said with the warmest smile Umi had ever seen, framed angelically against the pitch oranges and reds lighting up the evening sky. Umi didn't know what this was, nor did she have the mental wherewithal to decode the answer. She was too preoccupied staring at Honoka slackjawed, unable to conjure any kind of reply, but in retrospect that might have been exactly what Honoka had planned on.

Honoka giggled, took her hand, and led her onwards. They left the kiss where it had been, a perfect second etched into the ground that they had stood upon. Honoka never once brought it up, nor did Umi, even when that memory played back in her head night after restless night, long after life had moved on. She would rationalize it as Honoka being Honoka, that same boundless source of inscrutable, rash choices that had taken them all the way to Love Live.

After all, it was only a kiss, a fleeting moment in time. She just had to hold onto it, even if she was the only one to do so. Honoka was the stars, the sun, the full moon, and every other bright light that reflected off the still surface of the ocean; Umi could never in good conscience forget that.

She loved Honoka too much to do so.

ii.

Honoka and Kotori were dreamers. They saw the stars and chased them, refusing to let those distant shimmers of hope elude their grasp. Umi always followed behind, loyal and true to whatever they needed her to be, but she could never bring herself to feel the same way when she looked up at that night sky. She didn’t reach for the stars; she rooted herself to the ground.

All her life, Umi had taken it upon herself to be the bearer of weights that her friends couldn't carry. She was the realist, if there ever really was such a thing, and she hated to live in denial. That was why she shouldered the burden of the brick wall they had always been careening towards. Childhood, middle school, high school; it had all been building towards adulthood, and no matter how many good times Umi shared with her best friends, she couldn't escape the knowledge that life would catch up with them. They all had people they had to become, new realities to construct for themselves.

That was why she had never been truly shocked when Kotori drifted from them after moving away for college. A life of Parisian cafés, cutting edge fashion, and all those other things Umi could only ever imagine - it fit everything Kotori had always wanted to become to a T. Umi refused to let herself be dismayed by the way weekly video chats turned into missed phone calls, how texts became few and far between. Now that there were four years separating them from their high school days, most of Kotori's messages had become apologies for not messaging. No one wanted to think about how exhausting that really was, so they just let it linger. To acknowledge the heartache of that dreaded read symbol was to face reality, one that Umi thought best to bear alone - so they never did.

But on an airplane making its way over the steppes of central Asia, Umi found herself careening towards that brick wall all the same.

“Ma’am? Ma’am?”

Umi’s contemplation was suddenly interrupted by the vaguely-recognized gesture of a hand waving itself in front of her immediate vision. Blinking a few times as her consciousness returned to her present environment, Umi craned her neck to look at the flight attendant next to her.

“I was asking you if you’d like something to drink, ma’am,” she explained.

“O- oh…” Umi’s thoughts were progressing in fits and starts at the moment, leaving her without any clarity of mind, but she managed to put everything aside for a brief moment. “A ginger ale would be fine.”

“Of course. And for your friend?” The attendant looked rather pointedly at Honoka, who was seated in the seat beside Umi, white-knuckling the armrests and staring straight through the blank screen on the headrest in front of her, eyes wide and face pale.

“Ah, right.” Umi sighed, the drawn-out breath of air signalling her exhaustion; she had warned Honoka of what would inevitably happen if she got on a plane, yet for all her posturing, Umi had never been able to tame Honoka, nor had she ever really wanted to. Instead, she’d always been inclined to pave over the cracks in Honoka’s plans - even if that meant micromanaging Honoka to make sure her fear of flying didn’t get the best of her. “A glass of wine might be a good idea,” Umi replied with a weary smile sporting the faintest hint of wryness.

The attendant’s eyes flickered to Honoka before returning to Umi. With a sympathetic look, she began pouring a glass and handed it over.

“It’s on the house,” she whispered. She passed Umi a can of soda next then swiftly moved on to the next person, leaving Umi no time to protest the gift. She knew she’d have to thank the attendant later, but first there was the matter of the woman beside her to attend to. She raised a hand to tap Honoka on the shoulder gently.

“For you,” Umi said with what she hoped was a comforting smile. The wine glass was offered to Honoka, who stared blankly for a moment before a hand finally released its vice grip on the armrest to receive it - it didn’t take very long before the wine had disappeared entirely, the empty glass set down on her tray table with a dull thud before Umi could even crack open her own drink.

“How close are we?” Honoka’s breaths came short and shallow, her vision refusing to break its connection with the seatback.

“Not very,” Umi replied. She rubbed a hand up and down Honoka’s forearm, before it came to rest on her shoulder. The gesture seemed to help, if only to ease Honoka’s outward symptoms of anxiety. “Why don’t you try getting some sleep? I’ll wake you up when it’s time for the customs forms.”

At that, Honoka’s expression finally loosened up, enough for a humored smile to sneak its way onto her sweat-soaked face. “Maybe,” she conceded. “I want to, I just can’t stop thinking about…” A hand waved around aimlessly, a feeble attempt to give some tangible form to the jumble of thoughts occupying her head. Suddenly, for the first time since they’d left the ground, she turned to Umi, her expression laced with an uncharacteristic apprehension. “Do you think she’ll be happy to see us?”

Right. Her. It seemed strange that neither of them had spoken that name in so long, as if by superstition. It held some surreptitious weight to it, one that was important enough to recognize yet too vague for either of them to grasp in a meaningful way.

It had barely even been spoken as they planned this trip, not even when Honoka had first come to Umi with the desire to fly all the way to Paris, Paris, France, to surprise her with a visit. Umi wondered why they were going through all of this if they weren’t prepared to talk about the woman they were supposed to be visiting, but posing the question would have been an ordeal all its own.

Instead she smiled, a plastered look masking the worry in her heart. “Thrilled,” she corrected Honoka. “She’ll be thrilled, I promise. Especially knowing that you flew twelve hours,” she added with a laugh. “I doubt she forgot how the flight to New York went.”

Honoka giggled in return, the fondness of the memory enough to visibly coax her from the worst of her anxiety. “Remember when I puked all over her brand new skirt?” she said as she held a hand to her mouth to keep herself from laughing too hard. “I felt so bad I spent all my money the first night buying her some expensive replacement.”

Umi laughed harder at the memory of Honoka trying to bum her lunches off of the rest of the group the entire trip, enough that she let out an audible snort. Her hands pressed themselves to her mouth in embarrassment, but not before the man across the aisle shot her an unamused glance. That only seemed to make Honoka laugh harder, though, and it took her a moment before she was able to control the outburst of giggles.

“I’m really excited to see her,” she said wistfully after wiping a tear of laughter from the corner of her eye. “I saw a selfie she posted on Instagram the other day, you know. She looks so beautiful now.”

Umi hadn’t had the heart to check Kotori’s social media in ages, but her imagination was more than capable of filling in the gaps, conjuring an image of that familiar ashen hair draped over some lovingly knit blouse or shawl, the kind of thing with an amount of frills and flourishes that only Kotori could pull off.

“I bet she looks like a proper fashion designer,” Umi concurred with a warm smile.

“Hey Umi-chan?” Honoka’s eyes had widened ever-so-slightly, giving them an almost innocent glint as a hand reached to Umi’s armrest and placed itself on top of Umi’s own. “Thank you for coming with me to see her.”

Umi’s mouth hung open for the briefest of moments in surprise. “I didn’t have much of a choice, you know. Do you really think I’d let you fly so far without me to keep an eye on you?”

“No,” Honoka suddenly said with a surprising amount of force behind the single word. “I mean it, Umi-chan. I…” She looked down solemnly as her voice trailed off, but a sudden bump of the plane brought her back to attention, back ramrod straight and hand clamping down on Umi’s. Only after a minute did her mouth start moving again, formulating her words cautiously. “I know it was last minute, and I know you think it’s a bad idea. Maybe you’ll wind up hating me for this, but I needed you with me. I wanted all three of us to be together again.”

If Umi didn’t know any better, she would have assumed this was all a ploy for sympathy, the way Honoka looked so innocent and laced her hand with Umi’s in a manner that almost felt cloying. But it was achingly sincere, just like everything else Honoka had ever done.

Just like this trip.

Umi furled her brows, doing her best to look stern before quickly giving up. She squeezed Honoka’s hand, and Honoka squeezed back.

“I’m happy to be here, Honoka.”

Honoka looked content with that reply, and Umi was grateful that she didn’t have to elaborate.

Suddenly, however, the plane hit another bout of turbulence and shook just long enough for Honoka to scurry back into her shell, the moment dying out with a quiet whimper. Umi sighed, and used her spare hand to pry open the book that had been resting on her tray table. Their hands stayed laced together.

If a brick wall lay in front of them, at least Umi was around to shield Honoka from the impact.

iii.

By the time they finally managed to get to their hotel - some creaky, blessedly cheap little place tucked away in the narrow alleys of the Marais - Umi was completely exhausted. She wasn’t sure how Honoka had managed to rebound so quickly after their flight, but evidently the sleep had done her well. She was practically bouncing off the walls, itching and raring to explore even as Umi was just beginning to settle in.

Umi, meanwhile, had spent the entire plane ride awake despite her best instincts, fretting and worrying aimlessly. Even attempting to put on a movie or read her unfinished romance novel had done nothing; her thoughts always quickly began to veer back towards the person she had lately been thinking about with tunnel-vision clarity - the very same person they were here to see. As always Kotori’s presence seemed to loom over their lives, even from so far away.

“Umi-chan, let’s goooo,” Honoka whined. She flopped down on the bed face first, a childishly indignant motion that elicited a chuckle from Umi. Putting aside her worries and exhaustion, Umi tried to shift her focus towards something more productive.

“Give me a few minutes, for the love of god. Why don’t you unpack instead?” A hand idly made its way to Honoka’s head, ruffling her matted hair gently. “Maybe run a brush through this mess too,” she added wryly.

Honoka let out a little hmph, the sound muffled by the comforter beneath her, and then flipped herself around so that she was staring at the mottled white of the ceiling. Umi moved her hand away instinctually, but before it could be fully retracted Honoka grabbed it and moved it back to her head, giving a soft smile of approval as Umi began the soothing motion again despite her embarrassment.

“We’re in Paris, though! I wanna go see that one street!”

“What street?” Umi stared at Honoka, brows scrunching up into an expression of bemusement.

“You know, like… the big one with the giant arch at the end! And all the shops!”

“The Champs-Elysees?” Honoka nodded enthusiastically, but Umi only sighed. “Honoka, that’s all high-end boutiques. You can’t afford any of those. If you’d like to go there to visit the Arc de Triomphe, though, I’d be happy to tell you a bit about the history of-”

“Wait!” Suddenly Honoka sat up, interrupting Umi’s words without even taking a moment to appreciate her carefully-choreographed French pronunciation. Umi let out an indignant hmph much as Honoka had done only a moment prior, but that too was to be ignored. “Okay, so... what if we look for Kotori’s clothes! I bet she’s got, like, really big fashion lines and stuff!”

Umi now found herself wincing when she heard the name, wounded by the knowledge that all of their conversations eventually came back around to Kotori Minami. Perhaps it was a futile endeavor to try and act as though they were here purely to see the sights, however, so she sucked it up and put on her best smile.

“Don’t you think we would’ve heard about it if she had a big fashion line? She’s still in school, Honoka.”

Honoka frowned, eyebrows furled. “Fair, I guess. Could we still look?” She stared up at Umi with pleading eyes that sparkled with all the innocence of an abandoned puppy, and Umi knew she couldn’t say no.

“Fine,” she conceded with a dramatic sigh as if this was an act of pity rather than one of enabling. “If you’d like to, I’ll join you.”

Those words were enough to elicit a whirlwind change of tone from Honoka, who instantly hopped out of bed with bounding energy to get ready, knocking Umi’s hand from its perch atop her head.

“You’re the best!” she shouted, and though she couldn’t see, Umi blushed fiercely at the praise.

She got up and laid claim to the bathroom as soon as Honoka had finished preparing, splashing some cold water on her face to try and shake off the exhaustion that wracked her body in preparation for a new day of keeping up with her oldest friend.

When she dried herself off, Umi looked up to meet her own gaze through the reflection in the mirror. With a worried frown, she scrutinized the skin on her face, trying to glean something from its flaws. Her laugh lines were far too visible, she’d never liked that. Kotori had always said they made her look mature, but Umi always read into that as old, regardless of what the intent behind the word had been.

Kotori. God, Umi hated how much she thought about Kotori. Every stray thought, every warm memory. No matter what, that ashen hair and feminine laugh wormed their way into each and every path her mind took. She would never admit it to Honoka, but it was enough for some small twinge of resentment to begin taking root in her heart as of late.

After all, if there was ever a single value that Umi cherished most, one that she clung to like a lifeline, it was loyalty. Loyalty was what gave her purpose, what got her up in the morning and what put her to sleep at night. She’d never faltered in standing by Honoka’s side, even after all these long years, and she couldn’t resist the feeling that Kotori hadn’t, even though she knew perfectly well that Kotori only left Tokyo when she had received Honoka’s blessing along with Umi’s.

Perhaps that was why her feelings towards Kotori had become so warped and complex over the years, why she viewed her childhood best friend with that hint of disdain that she knew she had no right to hold. When Kotori had expressed that she wanted to go to school in Paris all those years ago, Umi had supported her despite the crushing sadness that would have been left in their hearts as μ’s lost such an important member. Umi could never have begrudged her for chasing her dreams, no matter what that had ultimately meant for everyone else.

Yet still Umi had failed in that responsibility, at least to some extent. Maybe that made her a hypocrite, she thought idly as she applied some concealer to cover the dark circles under her eyes. If she couldn’t even whole-heartedly support Kotori, how could she call herself loyal? These thoughts had always found a way to disrupt her lines of thinking and make her question her presumptions, but while that was a healthy thing, it was also exhausting.

Tending to Honoka was easier, comfortable and familiar in the effects it had on Umi’s heart. She understood the thumping in her chest whenever she made Honoka smile, or the way she only knew how to express her feelings by nitpicking. It made sense, so much more than her jumbled thoughts on Kotori.

Soon enough she finished getting ready, however, and made a note to stop for some coffee as soon as possible. Honoka was waiting for her at the door, effortlessly beautiful in a flowery pink blouse that made Umi’s dress shirt look drab in comparison. Her lips were brushed with a hint of glitter and tinted a faint pink. Umi stared for the briefest of moments before catching herself, wondering how Honoka’s lips would taste if she captured them with her own right then and there. Would they taste of strawberry? She chided herself for the thought, however, and let it go.

They made their way to a major street and hailed a cab, the trip passing by in a flurry of scenery and excitable chatter from Honoka. Umi only stared out at the passing architecture with a gaze that she hoped didn’t seem as pensive as it felt, her mind barely keeping track of Honoka’s trains of thought.

“... Umi-chan?”

Eventually, hearing her name managed to rouse her attention, and she jolted from her stupor. That had become far too regular an occurrence, she thought absently to herself.

“What? Sorry, I didn’t catch that,” she sheepishly confessed.

“I was asking if you’re excited to go surprise Kotori-chan tomorrow!”

“Oh, right… yes, of course. Tomorrow.” Umi gave Honoka a smile that she hoped seemed genuine, though internally she was filled with little else other than dread at the thought.

Even after they stepped out of the cab and emerged into the bustling heart of Paris with wide-eyed wonder, Umi could only dwell on the day ahead of them. They had agreed to take a day to themselves first on Umi’s insistence, if only to get their bearings and rest, then to surprise Kotori the next day with a visit to her school. Really, it was a matter of convenience above all else; they didn’t even know where Kotori lived, much less any other detail about her life. The only reason they actually knew when to wait for her at her school’s front gate was because Umi had called its admin office and practically begged for Kotori’s schedule in broken French.

And yet even though Umi found herself in the throes of her anxiety, the birds kept chirping and the sun kept shining without a care in the world for her plight. It was a gorgeous summer day, crystal clear skies holding no trace of the stormy clouds that made up Umi’s thoughts. At least Honoka seemed to be enjoying the ambiance, Umi thought; if she were worrying as much as Umi, at least, she didn’t reveal it. She just kept smiling her usual smile, tugging Umi along by the cuff of her shirt, and Umi dutifully followed.

The next hour was a whirlwind rush of boutiques that blurred together into one amorphous mass, the sheer amount of shopping enough to induce a headache. Eventually they found themselves in a shop towards the end of the street, a quaint little place selling a variety of cute outfits. Honoka had snagged a few off the wall, holding one after another in front of her in front of a mirror, like she were imagining herself as one of the models who graced the runways of the city.

“That one looks good on you,” Umi eventually chimed in with a warm smile. Honoka was holding up a light summer dress decorated with vibrant yellow sunflowers. In the mirror it seemed to be a perfect fit, the image of it cascading down Honoka’s body already crystal clear in Umi’s mind.

“The colors complement you well,” she added. Honoka hummed thoughtfully.

“You think? I’m not sure. It’s too expensive, anyways.” The corners of her lips tugged downwards, and she moved to hang it back up on a nearby rack. “Kotori-chan or Nico-chan would know what to pick out for me.”

“I’m sorry I can’t help with this kind of thing…”

Honoka looked up at Umi apologetically. “No, no, it’s not your fault. I just miss going shopping with them, you know? I feel like I didn’t appreciate having two designers around enough,” she added with a sheepish laugh. Umi didn’t say anything in reply.

The two wandered out of the store silently, Umi’s eyes squinting as the sun’s rays came to bear down upon her vision. Once they finally adjusted, she turned to Honoka.

“I know it’s not as fun, but… maybe some history?” She jabbed her thumb behind her, pointing towards the imposing monolith that was the Arc de Triomphe, and Honoka laughed.

“That sounds like fun,” she said. They began walking towards its base, cutting through throngs of tourists much like them.

When they got to the arc, Honoka immediately bounded off to explore the surrounding area, leaving Umi to think about Nico as she ran the palm of her hand along the smooth marble, soaking in the centuries of history all around them. When was the last time they’d really talked? Nico was busy with her idol career, sure, but was that really any excuse?

She loved all her old friends so dearly, and yet she let them drift away from her so easily, telling herself all the while that she was freeing them somehow. It didn’t feel fair to them. Hell, it didn’t feel fair to Honoka.

Umi’s fingers brushed against the engraved names of people long since gone, whose stories had been buried and snuffed out by the intervening centuries, and she tried to think of the last time she had seen Honoka’s eyes truly sparkle. Maybe it had been Love Live, but… she knew in her heart that it was that autumn evening lost to the years, when they had shared a kiss that Honoka probably couldn’t even remember. Back when things had seemed so much more simple, when they all still shared a city.

Umi wished things had stayed like that.

Chapter Text

iv.

Kotori once said something that stuck with Umi, clinging to her skin like a layer of grime she could never quite wash off. It must have been right around when they graduated, though the details had become foggy with the slow creep of time. The only part that had crystallized, made concrete and real in a way that few moments from that twilight of high school truly felt, was the scenery. It had been spring, but summer was already seeping into view in the form of the birds chirping, the oppressive heat bearing down, the way every day seemed to drag on and on into a hazy, listless blur.

It was at the end of one of those days, perhaps, that Umi and Kotori sat on a swing set in an empty park they’d stumbled across. The leaves on the trees ambled and swayed without a care in the world above them, and the incessant hum of a cicada sounded out somewhere in the distance. Umi found herself drawing the back of her hand across her brow in a futile attempt to rid herself of the thin layer of sweat that had formed there.

“You don’t have to look so nervous, Umi-chan.”

Umi quickly craned her head to face Kotori, who had affixed her with a wryly concerned look as she pressed a can of iced coffee to her cheek. Even Kotori, in all her endless aesthetic perfection, wasn’t immune to the heat.

“Is that how I seem?” Umi replied. “It’s just…”

“Hot,” Kotori finished. “I know. But still, I just can’t help but see you sitting there, desperately trying to think of something to talk about.” A giggle flittered about in the air to punctuate the thought, one that registered in Umi’s mind as reassurance that the teasing was in good faith.

Umi grumbled all the same, however, wanting vehemently to object despite knowing perfectly well that Kotori had caught her brain in the act of racing towards a million dead ends - as it so often did.

“There’s only so many more times we’re going to do this, Kotori. Don’t you feel like you need to make it count?”

A thoughtful hum escaped Kotori’s lips. “I suppose I do, but... well, doesn’t just being together count?”

“That’s such a Kotori thing to say,” Umi replied with a humored roll of her eyes. “Why can’t you just brood like the rest of us?”

The two shared a laugh together, one that died out after a few seconds and melted into the chorus of cicadas around them.

“So, are you brooding then?” Kotori turned to Umi, a thoughtful look in her eyes paired with that ever-knowing smile she wore.

“Not really,” Umi replied, the sincerity coming to her surprisingly easy. Kotori had always had that effect on her, she supposed. “Fretting, perhaps. I’m worried that I’ll look back on days like this one and regret that I didn’t cherish them enough.”

“Well luckily for you, you’ve got someone else to share the burden with.” Kotori nudged Umi gently with her shoulder, and in turn Umi cracked a faint smile. “Good,” she added. “You’re smiling. I wish you would do that more often.”

A faint hint of rose bloomed on Umi’s cheeks, and the corners of her lips retreated downwards out of self-consciousness. “I’m not very good at that lately,” she remarked sheepishly.

“You’re better at it than you realize,” Kotori replied. The remark left Umi puzzled, but it wasn’t a rare occurrence for Kotori to offer those kinds of cryptic musings that always seemed to pass over Umi’s head. Whether or not it was intentional, Umi couldn’t quite decipher.

Regardless it didn’t particularly seem to matter, not when Kotori chose not to expand on the thought. Instead they retreated to a comfortable silence, Kotori’s legs swinging back and forth as they hung off the swing. Umi could only sit there, grasping the chains on either side of her as she watched the occasional stray soul pass by on the street in front of them. Salarymen on their way home, couples out on evening strolls. Everyone had somewhere to be, but no one seemed to be in a rush to get there - not during Tokyo’s golden hour, when the sky was ablaze with color and life.

“You know,” Kotori finally spoke with thoughtful measure, “if you’re looking for something to talk about, there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you.”

Umi swayed her seat back and forth idly. “What is it?”

“Well… I thought you would accept that scholarship in Kyoto. What happened to that?”

Kotori had mentioned once upon a time that Umi was predictable, and perhaps Umi had a chip on her shoulder about it still. At the thought of being measured the way Kotori so often measured her, her skin bristled and the corners of her lips tugged downward.

“Why do you bring that up?”

“Oh, just curiosity.”

“Well, I wanted to stay in Tokyo,” Umi replied curtly, a sudden change of tone.

In response, Kotori only gave her one of those knowing looks, the ones that seemed innocent yet hid some small measure of disappointment in the corners of her eyes.

“I’m sorry Umi-chan, but I don’t think you did.”

“Kotori…” Umi sighed, her hands fidgeting with the pleats of her skirt. She knew where this was going, and she wasn’t about to ward Kotori off with a mere caustic look. Suddenly, her wish to make this moment count had started to seem more like a curse she’d placed on herself. “You can’t decide things like that for me.”

“You decided it for yourself,” Kotori corrected. “You went there to visit last fall. You bought a shirt. I saw the texts in the group chat, Umi-chan, how excited you were. Then you just… stopped talking about it.” She paused, breath wound and bated. She went for the kill, words that flew through the air like bullets despite being little more than a whisper. “Is this about Paris?”

Umi tensed. It was a harsh insinuation, or at the very least a highly vulnerable one. Umi looked to Kotori, gauging the gleam in the golden amber of her eyes. Somewhere in time, she’d gotten the idea that they shared some connection through that shared eye color, but now it only seemed a childish thought, not any kind of real tie that could bind them.

“No, I, I didn’t…” Umi fumbled her words, desperately groping in the dark for some means of reassurance that was far too ephemeral to take hold of.

“Umi-chan,” Kotori interjected with a gentle force to the word. “Just be honest, please. It’s just the two of us.”

“No! I mean… maybe.” Umi grimaced, knowing full well how Kotori would feel if she didn’t phrase this the right way. Her next words came out slowly, weighed and considered. “Maybe it was influenced by you leaving. I don’t really know. I just felt that it was right to stay in Tokyo. I have duties and obligations, Kotori. It’s best for me not to abandon them.”

At that Kotori’s expression softened into a smile, if one that carried some faint trace of sadness. “And Honoka-chan?”

An image of Honoka, crystal clear, flashed through Umi’s mind. She stood there, haloed by gleaming light and looking like life itself. Umi swallowed the lump in her throat. It hurt.

“She would benefit from me being here. We won’t be going to the same university, but…”

“Oh, Umi-chan.” Kotori sighed and slumped backwards, eyes affixed at the evening sky. It was an odd pose, so far removed from that measured femininity with which she’d always carried herself. “You’re not her keeper, you know.”

Umi bristled. “I never said I was. I just think-”

“You just think she needs you to take care of her?”

Umi tightened her grip on the swing’s chains until her knuckles burned. “Don’t interrupt me, Kotori.”

Kotori lolled her head to the side, to face Umi. “Sorry, that was unfair of me,” she replied sincerely, before she turned back to face the sky. “Here, how about this. Can I tell you something I’ve never told either of you before?”

Umi was still upset, but she steadied herself. Kotori hadn’t really done anything wrong; she was just trying to bridge the divide. “Of course.”

Kotori didn’t reply for a moment, content to bask in the warmth of the summer air, the pinks and oranges outlining the skyscrapers as the sun set behind them. When she did speak, her words came out slowly, with a sense of hesitance.

“For the longest time, whenever you and Honoka fought or disagreed, I felt… happy. That must sound really bad, huh?” She offered up a weary laugh, but Umi couldn’t bring herself to give Kotori the reassurance she was so transparently searching for. Instead she wanted to see where this was going, to measure her response carefully.

Finally, Kotori continued. “I would step in and mediate, tell you to be kinder, tell Honoka to work harder, whatever I felt was right. And you two would make up like you always did, and then we’d all be one happy family or something. It was… nice. It was familiar. It made me feel like the two of you needed me.”

Umi’s breath hitched ever so slightly as that final confession left Kotori’s lips. “I’m… I’m sorry, Kotori. I didn’t know you felt that way.” Umi did something she rarely ever did - she crept her hand closer to Kotori’s and squeezed it gently, an offering of comfort that was acknowledged by Kotori’s eyes growing wide for the faintest moment. “We’ve always needed you, Kotori. Not to fix our mistakes. Just… to be you. I hope you know that.”

Kotori smiled wearily. She let go of Umi. “That’s just the thing, Umi-chan. I decided on Paris in some small part because I thought you were going your own way too. Now that you’re staying in Tokyo, I’m not sure what scares me more: the idea that the two of you do need me and you’ll fall apart when I leave, or the idea that you’ll be perfectly fine.”

Umi couldn’t bear to reply to that, even though she knew that Kotori’s fears deserved credence. She felt a lump form in the back of her throat, one that constricted her breathing and left her choked, long enough for Kotori to continue speaking unabated.

“I’m scared that all you’ll ever do is think about Honoka-chan, to your own detriment. Hers as well.” She paused for the briefest moment, taking in the sun just as it crested the horizon, signalling the evening’s farewell. “Can I ask you one last thing, Umi-chan? Before it’s too late?”

Umi nodded, swallowing the lump in her throat as Kotori turned to face her in the eyes.

“Are you really happy like this?”

The words hung like lead in the air, delivered with none of the lithe grace that Kotori’s voice usually carried. Now it was only sobering, no reassurance to soften the blow nor sage advice to provide cold comfort. It pierced Umi’s heart and reverberated all the way up until the present, as the words echoed over and over in her mind.

“Umi-chan?”

A pair of groggy eyes pried themselves open, exposing themselves to the harsh sunlight that was spilling out from half-parted curtains. Reeling, Umi snapped them shut once again and pulled the cover of the bed up over herself in an almost childish manner.

Had she really been dreaming? Her mind had never been one to stray in the midst of her sleep, and yet it took her a few moments just to process that she wasn’t still in Tokyo, chatting the last dredges of sunlight away with Kotori.

Kotori. Right.

Umi bristled as she felt a hand jostle her shoulder. After a moment, she worked up the nerve to open her eyes yet again and sat up, meeting Honoka’s gaze.

“Wh… what time?”

Honoka laughed at the way Umi formed her words, each landing with a dull thud in the stale air of the hotel room. “It’s eleven in the morning. I thought you might need your rest,” she added with some small amount of reticence as soon as Umi’s eyes widened. “You looked really wiped last night.”

“... Right,” Umi replied, her voice little more than a murmur as she dragged her legs off the side of the bed and put on a pair of slippers. Her memory returned to yesterday, reminded of an exhaustion that had served as the reward for all her endless fretting. She would never tell Honoka that restless nights had become her new normal, but maybe Honoka already knew. “When do we need to be out the door, again?”

Umi was met with no reply, however. Pausing her trek to the bathroom, she turned around to meet Honoka, who wore an obfuscated expression as her eyes trained directly on Umi. It was vaguely unnerving, like Honoka was looking through her, but she did her best to put that feeling aside. “I do hope you remembered,” she added in her usual chiding tone.

Only after the briefest of passing moments did Honoka put on a smile, as if she had never missed a beat to begin with. “Give me some credit, Umi-chan, how could I forget?” She laughed. “She gets out at two, so maybe we could leave at one, stop at a cafe on the way?”

Umi’s brows knit themselves as if by instinct as she nodded, eyes narrowing in an attempt to glean something, anything, from Honoka’s sudden shift in behavior. Was she nervous about what was to come? Or was her mind simply aimless?

Perhaps it was a futile effort to try and say. For all Honoka’s honesty, she could be inscrutable sometimes, and Umi hated that. She despised the way that she so often felt the space between them like a festering wound, even now as they looked each other in the eyes. The woman she loved stood only a few feet away with a sheepish smile painted across the unblemished skin of her face, and yet...

Why did Honoka have to be so far away from her?

v.

The walk across town was a silent one. Honoka hadn’t wanted to take a cab and Umi had readily agreed, sunshine and the distant chirp of birds vastly preferable to the suffocating drabness of a cab. Umi wasn’t sure she’d have been able to fill the silence of a car anyways; ever since she had stirred from her sleep, she’d been nursing a pit like a black hole forming in her stomach that sucked up all the words she might have spoken. Apparently, Honoka wasn’t much more eager for small talk herself.

The lull in conversation gave Umi a chance to look ahead for once, rather than to Honoka, and what she saw disturbed her. There had been something lurking on the horizon all this time, and yet it hadn’t felt tangible until today; now, though, Umi could see it crystallizing into something tangible, something she could palm in her hand and turn over a million little times.

She didn’t want to see Kotori. Worse, she knew that they shouldn’t see Kotori.

The admission wounded her heart to admit, ripping it apart with guilt and shame. Kotori was their best friend, after all, or at least Honoka insisted that was still the case. They had flown across the world for her. Yet they hadn’t spoken in… how long now?

Umi found her eyes lingering on Honoka as they sat at some gauche, touristy cafe on the Île de la Cité, just across the Seine and a short walk from where they would be waiting for Kotori. Honoka was happily nipping away at a small bowl of coffee gelato, while Umi had chosen not to get anything herself. Without conversation to give her something to focus on aside from the inescapable dread, she found herself discreetly pulling her phone out underneath the table, knitting her brows and twisting her stomach into knots as she scrolled through her texts. There hadn’t been many as of late; communications from anyone other than her parents tended to flow in like a trickle from a leaky faucet.

Christ, her parents. They didn’t even know that Umi was here, nor did anyone from μ’s. What did it say about Umi and Honoka that they hadn’t even told μ’s?

Finally, she stumbled across the conversation she’d been searching for, a group chat the three of them shared once upon a time. Umi stared at it for a moment, her heart breaking as she realized that barely anyone had used it aside from Honoka in months. It was message after message from her number, links and memes and random photos she’d taken. One was of some stray μ’s merchandise she had seen, another of a cat she’d found in a back alley. Sure, there was the occasional stray reaction and sticker from Umi, but looking back she was mortified to see how forced they looked. Even Honoka seemed to have given up; the chat’s last believer had never been given any reason to keep trying.

After a pause, Umi had one other thought. She exited the group chat and scrolled through her messages farther and farther back, until an old relic lost to time crept into view.

It was the last message in her private chat with Kotori, a selfie. Hair done up in that achingly familiar little loop, ashen and catching the sunlight just right. A little peace sign made for the camera, a silhouette of a woman haloed by heart and sparkle emojis. In the background, a girl Umi had never met or even heard of, mugging for the camera.

Umi had given one of her many halfhearted replies, and that was it. That had been a little over a year ago.

“Should we get going?”

Umi flinched at the sound of Honoka’s voice. She was so sucked up in a memory from a lifetime ago that she had lost sight of the present moment; as she craned her head up to meet Honoka’s soft smile, lips curled up and eyes sparkling, she softened.

“Yeah,” Umi spoke. “I guess we probably should.” The bill was paid a few moments later, and Umi leveraged the dredges of her French to ask for some quick directions from their server. Within only a few minutes, the two of them were directly over the Seine on the Pont Saint-Michel, walking along cobblestone older than they could fathom. Honoka silently took Umi’s hand, lacing them together loosely without any acknowledgement aside from a flicker of a smile.

We’re going to be okay, it seemed to say. Whether that was the intended message or even a truthful one at that, Umi couldn’t bear to consider.

Even with the small creature comfort of Honoka’s touch, each step forward that willed Umi towards Kotori took a herculean effort. Her regrets had become a weight she carried with her, her longing manifested as a quiet, lingering heartache. Those emotions had made their home in the vast, empty gulf between her and Kotori, dogging her with the desire to reconnect yet making it impossible to even say hello.

And then they led her to a marble gate outside of the Paris School of Fashion, marked by an imposing stone-carved facade that represented the grandeur and history among which Kotori had made her new life.

It was 12:57pm, and Umi wanted to go home. There was churning in her stomach that wouldn’t stop, and her heart was gripped by a crushing anxiety telling her that this was wrong. She needed to go home and forget all this ever happened. They both did..

They couldn’t dredge all of this up just for their own selfish desires. It was so wrong, so unfair. Yet before she could tug Honoka’s hand, to lead her away from all this, Umi found herself unable to move. There, just in front of them, was a head of ashen hair. It appeared when Umi wasn’t looking, almost as if by magic. Kotori faced away from them, gazing down at her phone. They still had time.

Umi tried to whisper to Honoka, but she choked on the words as they lodged themselves in her throat, rendering her unable to even breathe. There was nothing she could do to stop Honoka from speaking Kotori’s name, releasing it into the muggy summer air along with four years of hopeful longing.

Kotori turned around, and she stared. No words were spoken, not when the shock etched across her face said everything. She looked as though she had seen a ghost, and Umi knew perfectly well that she had seen two of them. Only after a few excruciating moments did she finally say something, her vocal cords straining to make sound and her lips just barely able to sculpt it into a few achingly terse words.

“What are you doing here?”

It was funny, in some twisted, tragic sense, that they found themselves here among the ruins of what they’d once held dear. At least, that was the only way Umi could rationalize it to herself. Tragedy became comedy, a coping mechanism she knew all too well. All this time they had been half a globe apart, and yet only now that they were talking to each other did the distance truly feel like a divide too vast to cross.

Even Honoka faltered in the face of Kotori’s reaction. Her breath hitched as she stared back at her childhood friend with wide eyes. Only after several moments had passed, the birds chirping to keep time, did she finally reply.

“We wanted to see you,” she spoke. There was no grace to the words, none of her usually cheerful energy to buoy them. They landed with little more than a dull thud, and it took all of Umi’s strength not to visibly grimace.

“Well,” Kotori whispered, her face completely expressionless, “here I am.” There was a subtle change, one that started almost imperceptibly until it suddenly wasn’t. Her expression was one of stoney coldness as she looked to Honoka, then to Umi, as though she expected something. An explanation, an excuse, an olive branch? Umi couldn’t even tell.

Except then Umi saw the veneer begin to falter, crumbling away faster than Kotori could keep putting it back together. Umi wanted to do something, but when she looked back on that moment far in the future, she would feel nothing but shame at the knowledge that she simply stood there as a pitiful, wretched frown began to overtake Kotori's expression.

"I- I mean…" she tried to continue, the words struggling to leave her mouth. Her hands balled themselves into fists and she began to shake ever so slightly, but she never broke eye contact. "You couldn't have said anything? You just… showed up here?"

Umi's lips parted with the intent of forming a reply, something, anything that could make this okay, but her vocal cords protested. In the distance, church bells chimed to announce the beginning of a new hour and the oppressive march of time. They would have sounded angelic any other day, but now they only taunted Umi.

She turned to look at Honoka, who was beginning to look as fragile as Kotori, her face contorted into a frown. Umi’s mind was cleaved in two, torn between empathy and anger.

And then the two emotions began swirling into something sharper.

“You couldn’t have talked to us to begin with?” Umi finally shot back, her reckless impulses taking over in a sudden shot of indignant adrenaline. She knew that she would regret every feckless word pouring out of her mouth, but she’d never been good at leaving well enough alone. “What were we supposed to do, text you and hope you would reply in a year? Would you have even wanted us here?”

Some part of her wanted to continue the lashing, but the hurt she’d painted onto Kotori gave her enough pause to bate her breath. Only after a few moments did she finally conclude her thoughts as her stomach continued to sink.

“Why can’t you just be happy that we’re here?”

The question was whispered, every word an agony to form and shape and spit out. No more came after, not when the three of them stood there and took in the space between them. It wasn’t interrupted by the sounds of the city, but by another voice, shouting from the front of the school.

“Kotori-chan! I thought I’d missed you!”

Umi’s eyes went wide, and she turned to face the source of the voice as it bounded towards them from the school; a girl with wavy, short ashen hair who was smiling with all the radiance of the sun itself. She paused when she reached Kotori, however, and the smile vanished. She looked at Honoka, then Umi, her gaze lingering on Umi’s hardened, weary visage before it finally returned to Kotori’s.

“Who are these two?” she whispered.

That was when the dam broke. It came down with no forewarning, no signal to prepare Umi’s heart for the devastation in Honoka’s eyes or the panic streaking down Kotori’s cheeks. Before anyone could say anything. Kotori turned in the other direction and took a step away that became two, three, a million. She ran away, disappearing around the corner and leaving her unknown friend looking shellshocked.

Umi’s eyes lingered on the space where Kotori had been, but no amount of attention paid would bring her back. She took every emotion and bottled them in her heart, deep down where she wouldn’t have to confront them, then turned to the girl.

“My name is Umi,” she began in a lifeless, monotone clip. “This is Honoka. We’re friends with Kotori.”

“Oh.” The girl’s eyes went wide with recognition. “You’re from μ’s.” The revelation might have seemed nonchalant had it not been spoken with such urgency, like something she wasn’t supposed to know.

“Yeah,” Umi confirmed in a single, weary breath.

That was when the girl’s gaze hardened, becoming reclusive where it had once been so warm and inviting.

“I’m You,” she spoke. “Her girlfriend.”

And then she walked away, leaving Umi and Honoka alone as the birds sang all around them.

vi.

If the walk to Kotori’s school had held a simmering kind of silence, now it was deafening. Any words Umi might have spoken to Honoka were choked on and swallowed whole, leaving her unable to provide whatever cold comfort she might normally offer.

In lieu she elected to turn the conversation over in her mind, looking at it from any and all angles to try and make what she could of it. All the while she danced around her own outburst, one that had carried all the succor of a shot of cyanide. Her mind kept returning to one thing, though, no matter how much she avoided the thought: Kotori had a girlfriend. She hadn’t thought of it at the time, but now Umi realized why that hair was so familiar; it was in Kotori’s selfie, sent so long ago. How long had they been together?

It was none of Umi’s business, and yet that had never stopped her from prying into other people’s affairs. Her mind searched for places it shouldn’t go, diving down each and every rabbit hole with an exhausting relentlessness. She thought of what Kotori must have shared with You, inventing scenario after fictitious scenario of the two of them together. She had no right to be jealous, and yet how could she not be of someone so close to her childhood friend?

Quickly, she found herself cresting the same mountain of anger as before. Her eyes closed. Deep breath, slow inhale, slow exhale, one after another. She contained it, bottled it. Put it back on the shelf with all of her fear and longing and regret.

She wasn’t really even sure when they returned to the hotel; one minute she’d blinked and there they were in the stairwell, then in front of their room, looking at each other with inscrutable expressions. Umi tried to search for the light in Honoka’s eyes but only found a reflection of her own vacant gaze.

“I’m sorry, Honoka.”

The words came out soft as a whisper, and in truth Umi had so many things to apologize for that she couldn’t even know where to begin. It felt selfish of her to offload that burden onto Honoka, but in truth that lone apology was all she could bear to provide in the moment.

But as Honoka opened her mouth to form a reply, someone walked by and stole her words as they passed. She opened the door and stepped inside, leaving Umi to follow.

They said precious few words to one another throughout the rest of the day as they wasted away the sunlight on whatever could hold their attentions. Honoka watched TV, Umi read a book. None of it even registered. The afternoon frayed and unraveled into the evening, bright blue skies melting away into a swirl of pinks and reds as the sun retreated past the patchwork of buildings tracing the horizon.

Umi stood up from her perch on the chair and stared at Honoka, who was in the same position she’d been in for the last several hours - curled up in the bed, eyes glazed over yet still glued to whatever TV show was on. Umi doubted that Honoka could even say what she was watching.

This couldn’t continue.

With resolution in her heart, Umi pulled her suitcase from the closet and planted it on the floor, gathering clothes to pack inside - only then did Honoka seem to come alive, eyes wide at the sight.

“What are you doing?”

Umi looked at her, a frown etched on her face. “I’m packing. You should do the same.”

Honoka jumped up and ran over, frantically grabbing the blouse Umi was folding up. “What? You can’t!” she shouted in a panic. Her eyes darted from Umi to the suitcase, then back again. “You can’t,” she repeated, this time in a whisper. It wasn’t directed at Umi, but at herself.

“We should never have come here,” Umi replied slowly. She placed a hand on Honoka’s shoulder, enough to calm the worst of the panic consuming her. “Honoka, we need to go-”

But before Umi could even finish the thought, to speak a truth they had both known from the very start, she was cut off.

“I want to go dancing,” Honoka said. Her eyes closed and fists clenched tight.

“Honoka…”

“I just- I… I want to have fun, Umi-chan. I don’t want to leave, I just want to forget about everything.” Umi opened her mouth to dismiss Honoka’s desire as some naive flight of fancy, but her vocal cords choked on the single word she needed to say. Honoka’s face contorted into a pitiful frown. “Please, Umi,” she whispered softly.

Umi? An honorific that had borne years of a carefully-maintained status quo melted away in an instant, leaving her name sounding vulnerable and frail as it crept forth from Honoka’s tongue. Did Honoka not know the weight with which her every action was measured in Umi’s mind, how even the most subtle choice of words was liable to leave its mark across her heart?

Or was Honoka truly just that pitiful in this moment, so consumed by her own heartache that she was incapable of measuring her actions? The thought panged Umi as she saw a single droplet prick at Honoka’s eye, then another, both to be quickly and awkwardly wiped away with the back of a hand.

“If that’s what you want,” Umi murmured. Her will crumbled under the weight of her love, and all she could do was watch as Honoka constructed a bright, beaming, entirely fabricated smile. In a second, she’d already rushed to her suitcase. It lay unceremoniously on the floor, thrown open with clothes scattered about inside. Honoka dug through the pile briefly before pulling out two articles of clothing: dresses, a dark orange-red piece for Honoka and a navy blue equivalent for Umi. Both were clearly short and form-fitting, and Umi looked to Honoka looking for an explanation. Honoka only laughed bashfully.

“I picked this one out for you before we left. I guess I hoped we’d do something fun while we were here, with…”

Her words trailed off suddenly, and her smile flickered. Unceremoniously, she rushed to the bathroom and shut the door, only mumbling something about changing while Umi stood there, unable to offer a word of comfort.

How pathetic was she that she couldn’t even think of a single thing worth saying?

All she could do was to put on her own dress, grimacing at how it clung to her body. She’d always felt vulnerable in clothes like this; as an idol, Kotori’s ruffles and brash strokes of fabric had been a welcome solace on the stage, something for her anxiety-addled mind to hide behind. Now, she had no such armor. She felt exposed and vulnerable, put upon by the way the dress glimmered in the sterile light of the hotel room. It shone brightly, when all Umi felt she deserved to do was hide in the dark.

Honoka, however, was breathtaking. She’d finally stepped out of the bathroom wearing her dress, stealing away Umi’s breath in an instant. She’d even put on some makeup for the occasion, eyeshadow sultrily framing the cerulean of her irises. Umi’s mouth felt dry.

“You, uh, look nice.”

A wry smile crept onto Honoka’s face, given definition by the pale red of her lipstick. “You always say that,” she replied quietly, as if she were trying to reject the compliment but couldn’t quiet find the words to do so. Her voice was worn, but it still fought to reach Umi’s ears.

“Because it’s true. You look beautiful, Honoka. You always have.”

Umi’s vocal cords formed the words without her mind’s consent, yet she had said them all the same - and meant them. She blushed and looked away, but Honoka wouldn’t let her. She grabbed Umi’s hand, and when Umi looked back, she saw the first true warmth in Honoka’s eyes that day.

The next few hours were a whirlwind. Honoka led her from the hotel into a Parisian night, full of romance and hedonism and bright lights that looked like they belonged less in reality than in a Monet. They crawled the Marais first, Honoka eagerly tugging Umi into all kinds of bars and clubs, the kinds of places that Umi would never go of her own free will.

For Honoka, though, she would endure anything. Loud music, drinks, obnoxious partiers; it all receded from her peripheral vision as long as she kept Honoka in her sights.

Finally, after they were both already worn thin and floating on a few glasses of wine, they reached a discothèque tucked away in the narrow side streets. Umi would have paled at the thought of entering such a seedy-looking establishment, but Honoka talked them past the bouncer with only a few words of French, leaving her little time to complain before they went inside.

Umi never quite remembered what happened when they went inside - all the blinding lights and music and pure adrenaline melted away into a single moment, a feeling. That was all she needed, there on the dancefloor dancing with Honoka and genuinely smiling for the first time in what felt like years. No sorrow, no regrets. Just that feeling of untethered joy and young love.

By the time Honoka had the sense to lead them outside, Umi had been run ragged, gasping for breath and sweating up an ocean as she braced herself against Honoka. The worst of her inebriation had melted away, leaving only a slight sway in her step that threatened to topple her over in her current state. A rideshare provided a panacea, though, allowing Umi to crawl inside and slump against the backseat as they were whisked back to their hotel. Honoka held her hand tenderly, stroking it with a thumb as she whispered.

“We’ll be home soon, Umi. It’ll be alright.”

Each word sent Umi’s heart fluttering higher and higher into the night sky, the vestiges of a pinot noir shielding it from the insidiously anxious thoughts that usually sent it crashing back down. This was their night, she told herself as they pulled up at the hotel and made their way back inside the room in a blur. She repeated it to herself like a mantra as Honoka crept towards the bed and laid down, turning to Umi with an opaque gleam in her eye.

She beckoned Umi closer with that pleading, innocent smile she had always worn so well, and Umi’s will couldn’t prevent her from obeying. Her body stepped forward without her mind’s consent; even feet like bricks of lead couldn’t stop her as every step pulled Umi closer to the embrace of soft, satin bedsheets. Only after taking off her pumps did she climb in beside Honoka, her hands carefully snaking themselves around Honoka’s still-clothed body like it would shatter with even the slightest wrong movement. Her own dress remained on as well, clinging to her grimy, sweat-soaked skin with a will of its own.

Umi felt Honoka shiver within her grasp, and her heart pounded like a drum. She was hyper-conscious of where her hands lay, one resting against Honoka’s soft stomach and the other jammed awkwardly between them without anywhere to go. It was entirely ungraceful, but Honoka didn’t particularly seem to mind. She wriggled herself further into Umi’s grasp and tugged a blanket over the two of them, settling into a quiet that felt like it swaddled and suffocated them at the same time.

Though Honoka seemed thoroughly relaxed, the situation gave Umi little to do other than stew in her own feelings. They hadn’t touched each other like this since they were kids; in the midst of their twenties, though, the contact carried with it an entirely different meaning. It was sensual now, the way that Umi held Honoka and breathed in the scent of her hair. That she reveled in it sent her spiraling into a wave of guilt; Honoka was hurting, and yet Umi’s heart raced all the same.

She wanted Honoka even closer. How could she be so selfish?

She tried to pull a hand away, but Honoka held fast, pulling it taut against her sternum with a quiet hmph for effect. It left Umi with little recourse, and she was forced to stay still, to listen to Honoka breathe softly and try not to think about the placement of her arm against Honoka’s body.

Finally, finally, Honoka spoke.

“Do you like being around me?”

The words caught Umi off guard, a hitch in her breath as she inhaled the scent of Honoka’s hair. They seemed so out of sync with the moment, but perhaps Honoka had been holding onto them all throughout the night.

“Of course I like being around you,” she whispered in return. “You’re my best friend.”

Honoka laughed, a pitiful sound. “I really wonder about that, sometimes. If you like me.” She paused, and all the sound was sucked up into a void, leaving only the steady tick of the clock. “Don’t I feel like a burden sometimes? I take you places we shouldn’t go, make mistakes you have to clean up… it scares me so much, Umi. Knowing that you’d be so much more without me around.”

“But I’ve always been happy following you,” Umi eagerly replied. “You took us to Love Live-”

Honoka suddenly shot up, ripping herself from Umi’s embrace. “Love Live was six years ago!” she shouted, vitriol and venom like Umi had never heard laced into every word. “It was six years ago,” she repeated quietly, more to herself than Umi. An admission, perhaps. A regret. “You’re better off without me now.”

It was at that moment that Umi’s nerves finally frayed, the last of the wine fading from her to reveal a cold clarity she wasn’t prepared to confront. She shuddered and curled inward, occupying the empty space where Honoka had once lay in her arms.

“Please don’t say that,” she whispered, though her voice was no less decisive than it would be if her voice were raised.

“You can’t act like it isn’t true,” Honoka shot back in a huff.

“It isn’t!” Her voice crescendoed to a swell of rash anger, then petered back down to a slow simmer. “You can’t just decide these things for me,” Umi added quietly. “It’s... selfish.” Her eyes trained on the lace of the pillowcase, anything to avoid looking at Honoka as she laid back down next to Umi.

Even though she knew Honoka was hurting, Umi couldn’t help but focus on herself, no matter how wrong it was. She felt so hurt and confused at the way Honoka beckoned her closer one moment only to push her away the next, all under the pretense that it was best for her - as if Honoka truly knew what that entailed.

“I’m sorry, I just…”

“You just thought you knew me that well?” Umi interrupted, filling in the yawning silence left by Honoka with malice that she knew Honoka didn’t deserve. “Maybe if you weren’t so focused on Kotori all the time, you’d actually know why I’m doing all this for you!”

There it was, the words she was never supposed to speak, Pandora’s box flung wide open and left to gather dust. Umi couldn’t bring herself to face Honoka, not when she could already vividly imagine the hurt painted onto her face.

But still she pressed onward, carrying the hurt of seeing Honoka draw away from her. She swallowed the lump in her throat as she chose her next words carefully, thrust onward by a desperate desire to hear the answer.

"What am I to you, Honoka?"

Was she anything at all?

"I, um..."

Honoka was everything to Umi. Umi needed Honoka like a forlorn winter needs its spring to melt away the snow and coax the flowers into a beautiful bloom - but spring needs the summer, and Umi could never be that. She could never be so beautiful and warm and fleeting, not when she relied on Honoka just to instill some vague sense of life into her bones.

It wasn’t enough to know, though - it would never be. She needed to hear the truth from Honoka’s lips, and no matter how wrong it was to do so, she pressed. Her gaze trained itself on Honoka, pleading for a reply, for anything that could let her let go.

“You’re my Umi-chan,” Honoka eventually replied with a nervous laugh, the quiver in her voice hastily paved over with a shallow veneer of “I’m fine, I promise, please think I’m fine.” There it was again - the honorific, the distance, the quiet longing that Umi so painfully knew. It stung sharply, as though salt had been poured in a wound she’d been nursing for years.

“I’m the one who stays by your side,” Umi began again, turning to face Honoka as soon as she could will a stiff upper lip. “ Everything I do, Honoka, I do because I want you to be okay. Because I want you to be happy. How could you act like I’m just… putting up with you? Like I don’t even care?”

Suddenly, she regretted looking at Honoka. Those crystal blue eyes were so sad, a maelstrom of emotion that Umi couldn’t bear to witness. She looked down, like the coward she was.

“I… I didn’t mean to hurt you,” Honoka finally spoke. “But please… don’t act like Kotori doesn’t care. I know that’s what you’re saying,” she added hesitantly, unsure of her own accusation.

And that was enough to reignite Umi’s passion, to cause her to raise her voice, spilling her words out in a single acidic downpour as she grasped at the space between them, feeling spurned and forgotten.

"Of course that’s what I’m saying! You keep talking about her like she's been by your side, while I'm staring you in the face! I've been here for you this whole time and Kotori hasn't. Don't you get it, Honoka? She doesn't care about us! She doesn’t care about you!"

Yet as soon as each venomous, hateful word had finally left Umi's mouth, spit out into the open and leaving her with nothing to hide, she just wanted to take them all back. Honoka only stared at her, barely even looking hurt so much as stunned. A tear stained her cheek, then another, until the floodgates finally opened and she was truly crying.

Never in her life had Umi hated herself more than in that very moment. Not when she sat up and ran out the door, fumbling for her phone and wallet and closing the door behind her with an unintended slam. Not when she escaped down the stairwell, emerging into the moonlit street without a single intent other than to get as far away from the woman she loved as possible.

Not even when she texted Kotori for her address before stumbling off into the night.

Chapter Text

vii.

Umi had always been atrocious at keeping faith. It was like some sixth sense she’d never quite learned how to tap, hobbling and rendering her entirely unable to rely on the charity of others. In Umi’s mind a promise was a chance to be let down, a favor asked merely an exercise in futility. She’d spent so long learning to trust no one other than herself that she’d forgotten the sweet relief of having a kindness extended to her that she had no place receiving.

So when Kotori replied to her frenzied messages with a single address pointing to the Latin Quarter, Umi felt some long-lost part of herself awaken as she wiped the waterfall from the corners of her eyes and continued her trek through the dusk.

Paris in the dead of the night was a strange beast, teetering on the throes of death before the coming of the eastern sun would inevitably coax it back to the land of the living. Idly, Umi tried to fathom what the rest of Muse might have been doing in that moment back home. It was a Sunday morning there, wasn’t it? Nico was probably taking her one day off from celebrity life to kick back and pamper herself. Nozomi and Eli had probably gone their separate ways, one for church and the other to attend to her shrine. Maki and Rin and Hanayo had their own lives as well, places to be and mornings to bask in.

Idly, Umi found her hand drifting through her contacts as she stumbled along the city streets until she found Maki’s name buried between acquaintances she’d sworn she would reach out to yet never did. Her thumb hovered over the call button.

One seconds, then two, then three. Maki was a rational mind - Umi had lost her objectivity, or what little she hadn’t already traded for unrequited love.

Four, then five, then six. Maki would be able to tell Umi what she needed to hear - that they had done something wrong and needed to come home before she made it worse. Just like she made everything worse.

Seven, then eight, then…

Umi drew a deep breath, held it in her chest, then slowly let it back out. She pressed the power button on her phone and stuffed it back in her pocket, hiding just like always from every outside sense of reason. It was too late now, anyways. She was at Kotori’s apartment building - she’d already made it this far, and she was going to see every single mistake she’d made through to the end.

The door opened with little resistance, granting Umi passage. The stairs were a greater feat; with Umi’s current levels of exhaustion each step already felt as though it were a herculean task. Her anxiety, however, made them feel more akin to a purgatory created expressly for her. By the time she reached the door marked with the number from Kotori’s texts, Umi was ragged and breathless. Her last ounce of emotional strength came with the sluggish rap of the door.

One second, then two, then three. Umi’s anxiety ran rampant, painting pictures of Kotori refusing to answer the door with all the finesse of Monet painting the busy Parisian streets outside.

Then came a click, a singular sharp noise that pierced through every thought rattling inside Umi’s brain. There, standing in the doorway as soon as the threshold came apart, was You. Umi blinked in surprise.

“Umi,” she greeted tersely as Umi stared on at her blankly.

“I didn’t realize you lived here.”

“I don’t, I’m just spending the night. Kotori needed the company.”

Umi nodded in understanding - she hadn’t planned on this, but she would just have to make do all the same. Before she had time to second-guess herself she bowed her head deeply until she was at an angle somewhere close to ninety degrees in a single, swift motion.

“I would like to offer my deepest condolences to Kotori, on behalf of both me and Honoka. We wronged you both deeply, and-”

“Oh come on,” came a voice from inside that cut off Umi without hesitancy, wavering and faintly slurred. “Just let her in, You-chan. This is embarrassing.”

Umi rose, a self-conscious look caked on her face as You did as she was told, stepping away from the door so that Umi could be allowed inside. She did so only after taking care to remove her shoes and set them down at the threshold of a door - a small thing entirely out of place in a city like Paris, yet familiar enough to provide Umi a sense of comfort and belonging, as though she were back at Kotori’s childhood home rather than the cramped apartment that met her now-weary eyes. You drifted off toward the nook of the apartment that constituted a kitchen without another word, regarding Umi with guarded curiosity as she did so.

The walls and ceiling were a dull, lifeless white wherever they weren’t covered with all kinds of curiosities, dresses and fashion posters and sketches hung up wherever there was room. Furniture was arranged haphazardly wherever it might have fit, leaving the floor plan resembling something between an amateur game of Tetris and the vestiges of the Minoan labyrinth. All of it was lit up in a soft ambient glow by endless rows of little lights strung up into a canopy above. The way their light refracted around the room was almost intoxicatingly peaceful.

Lying in a dramatic pose befitting only the most glamorous of the movie stars that made up Paris’ silent films, Kotori Minami served as the room’s centerpiece. She was sprawled across a couch in front of the TV, watching an array of flashing lights that Umi struggled to make sense of - until she realized it was Muse’s very first live as a full group. Suddenly You’s continued presence in the room felt like an intrusion, as though she were bearing witness to a private memory. But it was anything but, and Umi knew that, so she bit her tongue.

“Do you know what I always remembered best from this night?” Kotori began, her voice clearly impaired. As Umi approached, she realized why; Kotori was nursing a large bottle of red wine, taking steady sips.

“What is that, Kotori?” Umi asked tepidly, inching closer as though the floor was a minefield, veritably or no.

“It was what Honoka-chan said to us right before the show. It was just us, I think. We’d broken off from the rest. Do you remember, Umi-chan?”

“I… can’t say I do,” Umi replied.

Kotori didn’t immediately reply, not yet. She turned back to the TV and watched rapturously as a song Umi was intimately familiar with began: first a gentle, lithe piano melody like a bird, joined swiftly thereafter by a panoply of horns and percussion and guitar work. It was almost overwhelming in its enthusiasm, buoyant and full of hope for the future in a way that felt like nothing more than a glistening memory. They’d been so young back then, full of hope and naive belief that their bond could last forever.

“I don’t remember either,” Kotori finally admitted after a moment with a quiet, weary laugh. She took another swig of wine, making little attempt to seem at all elegant in the process. “That’s part of why I feel so guilty for looking back on it so fondly. I just… miss that moment. I treasure it, because it was the last time we were a trio.”

Appearing on the screen, as if on cue, were their high school selves strutting towards the camera confidently. Kotori, Umi, and Honoka all sang out in unison, sharing a moment of triumphant celebration with their fans before they melded back into the group, and the sea of blues, greens, and oranges melted back into a cacophony of all nine member’s penlights vying for predominance over the others in the crowd. Kotori exhaled slowly.

“I loved Muse deeply. I really, really did. I was so proud of what we’d created, what Honoka-chan worked so hard for. But…” Her eyes cast downward, away from the ethereal glow of the TV that lit up Umi’s face. “The day the first years joined was the last day I ever felt like I was good enough for either of you.”

Umi’s thoughts snapped back to that day, the way that the evening sun beat down on the concrete of Otonokizaka’s roof as their juniors overcame their fears to join Muse as a trio. It flashed forward to the secrecy that had followed, the distant glimmers of sadness in Kotori’s eyes as she began to slip away after school to work her side job as Minalinsky.

“I’m sorry,” Umi began slowly. She let the words dance in the air for a beat. “I’d thought you’d worked through that when we found out about the whole…”

Umi waved her hand around abstractly, attempting to paint a picture of an unusually bizarre episode of their lives without the anxiety that came with putting those kinds of memories to word.

“Yeah,” Kotori confirmed with a weary laugh. “I did, but I didn’t. Funny how that works.” Umi smiled wryly as she finally took the plunge and sat herself down on the couch next to Kotori.

“It would be pretty great if our problems could be wrapped up in a neat little bow by singing about them, huh?”

“I feel like I’ve heard that somewhere before,” Kotori replied playfully. “It sounds like something Honoka would insist on, that things will be alright if we sing our hearts out. I’m still trying to chase that kind of optimism.”

“Has fashion school already beat it out of you?” Umi cracked. Kotori didn’t seem to find the joke particularly amusing, however, and her smile faltered.

“It hasn’t been easy. But it’s something I’m doing for me. I need that.” Kotori took a hit of wine, either to punctuate the sentiment or just because she wanted to chase away whatever thoughts were swirling around in her head.

“And Honoka?”

Umi regretted those two words as soon as they slipped past her lips unattended. She could tell the effect they had on Kotori instantly, freezing her in place and inviting a slight twitch onto her face. In Umi’s peripheral vision, You tensed as she whisked away at a bowl in the kitchen. Umi had threatened what little hospitality she’d been offered - that much was clear.

“What about her?” Kotori asked tersely.

“Why do you think we came here, Kotori? You’re all she thinks about. She misses you.”

Kotori rolled her eyes and took another swig of wine. “I’m not her keeper, Umi-chan. Neither are you.”

The casual disinterest with which Kotori spoke, so alien to the Kotori that Umi had known all those years ago, poked at Umi’s rage like a cattle prod until she finally snapped under the weight of the day’s events.

Kotori’s apathy cut like a knife, and some selfish part of Umi wanted to cut Kotori in turn.

“Well that’s sure fucking easy for you to say, isn’t it? It’s not like you’d know what it’s like to be there for her anymore,” Umi shot back in reply, vitriol and venom laced into every word. She succeeded in wounding Kotori with them, as evidenced by the way Kotori winced, but she knew it was wrong. No matter what she said, Kotori didn’t deserve Umi’s anger - she never had.

A door slammed shut on the other side of the room, signalling You’s departure. A pit festered in Umi’s stomach.

“I’m sorry,” Umi said after a few moments of a suffocating kind of silence that lingered in the musty air of the room. “That wasn’t fair of me.”

“It really wasn’t,” Kotori replied in a voice that caught Umi off-guard with its sternness, eyes narrowed in defense. Umi was so used to Kotori being much more furtive than this, and she began to wonder just how much Kotori had grown when she hadn’t been paying close attention. The thought made her feel even more guilty than the words she had just spoken, like it had been a failing of her own.

Except then Kotori’s expression softened, and Umi saw that quiet softie she’d known and loved all throughout her childhood.

“Do you want to know something, Umi-chan? For the longest time, I thought I was your keeper.”

“What… what do you mean?”

Kotori heaved a sigh.

“I was never worried about Honoka-chan, even at our lowest moments. She had you, after all,” Kotori added wryly. “But that was just the thing. She was always looking ahead, and you were always chasing after her. I… I think I was scared that in all the craziness, no one was worrying about you. Not even yourself. And it escalated from there.”

Umi’s heart beat straight out of her chest, faster and faster as it struggled to contain the anxiety brought on by the meaning of Kotori’s words.

“Escalated as in…?”

“I fell in love with you,” Kotori replied. “For a long time.”

Umi wanted to say she was shocked. She wanted to play the part she knew she was supposed to inhabit, allowing her breath to be ripped from her and her heart to pound out of her chest as she reevaluated everything she thought she’d known about the moments they’d shared together. Yet at the same time, she knew that to play the part was to deny the truth.

She’d seen the stares Kotori gave her, so similar to the ones she’d aimed at Honoka. She’d heard the urgency with which Kotori whispered Umi’s name, as though its two kanji held the weight of the entire world within each brush stroke. No, she’d always known, even if she’d been too petrified to admit it to herself. Kotori’s love for her was mere fact, as undeniable as gravity.

“I’m so sorry, Kotori.” Umi looked to her with an apprehensive kind of empathy, attempting to bridge the gap that she’d allow to fester between them. Kotori only smiled.

She was so lonely, Umi could tell. It was in the corners of her eyes, weighed down with the weight of so many years of heartache.

“It’s okay, it was never your fault. You had your own sights set, I couldn’t expect you to keep your eyes on me.”

It wasn’t convincing, however. It was just Kotori trying to give Umi an out. Selfless, as always.

“No, Kotori…” Umi heaved a sigh, exhaling the last of her stubborn pride alongside it. “It was my fault. Just because I held my own feelings doesn’t mean that I had any right to lose sight of everything else that mattered to me. I saw all the signs, I should’ve known what they meant. I just…”

“Didn’t want to put the pieces together?” Kotori finished for her, cursed by her own empathy. Once upon a time Umi would have bristled at the thought of being read so easily, but now it felt nostalgic somehow. Kotori had always known her so well, better than anybody before or since - Umi was lucky to have that kind of affection, even if she’d never deserved it.

“Please don’t throw yourself a pity party, Umi-chan,” Kotori finally added after some indiscernible amount of time had passed. Umi looked at her in confusion until she saw what had been meant by the request: tears were pricking at the corners of her eyes. “I know it’s selfish, but I can’t stand to see you cry. Not right now.”

“Right, of course,” Umi assented as she hastily rubbed them away, doubtlessly succeeding only in leaving her eyes looking bright red and puffy. Leave it to her to find a way of looking even more pathetic than she had when she’d arrived, she thought to herself. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize.”

“It’s okay. I just… I’m tired of being the strong one.”

“Was that why you left Tokyo?”

Kotori smiled sadly.

“There were a lot of reasons. Some of them were good, some of them… not so much. Do you remember graduation?”

“Yeah,” Umi replied. A laugh escaped with her breath, but there was only the faintest glimmer of humor in the act. “Honoka cried like a baby when she realized it was the last time we’d be together like that.”

“You didn’t, though. You stayed strong.”

Umi looked to Kotori, attempting to crack that fey exterior Kotori had always worn like battle armor. It was an ill-fated effort, though. Just like old times.

“It was hard for me too, Kotori,” Umi said in defense. “You didn’t need to see that, not with Honoka as fragile as she was.”

“But what if I wanted to see you cry, Umi-chan?” Kotori was distraught. “I just… wanted to know you’d miss me. I wanted to know you felt something, anything for me. But you left, and I had to live with the knowledge that you two had each other and I just had myself. And then when I finally started moving on, you barged back into my life like I owed you something.”

“You left, Kotori,” Umi replied, voice harried as every ounce of her being struggled to not let vitriol seep into her words. “Nobody forced you to do that. Nobody made you stop responding to our texts. That was you and you alone.”

Yet despite her best efforts, the venom of her words was naked and plain as day. She’d set something off. She could have taken the high road, steeled herself and refused to let all the heartache out. She hadn’t, though, and now Kotori was primed to let all hers out in turn, increasingly frenetic in tone of voice. Where once had laid resignation and false acceptance now resided a deep, gnawing anger the likes of which Kotori so rarely revealed.

“I did what I had to do! I mean, I… I gave you both the first eighteen years of my life! I gave you everything, and all I got was a single goodbye! How could you be so selfish that you think that meant nothing to me?!”

A stunned, grieved silence fell over the room as soon as Kotori finished speaking, the sound of their first concert seemingly fading away into the background until it had all but vanished from their thoughts. Everything now resided painfully in the present, in the ticking of the clock and the gentle hum of the AC unit.

“Please, just… understand that I needed to create something for myself,” Kotori finally spoke, seemingly chastened by her own outburst. Her voice came quiet, little more than a whimper. “Every time I talked to you and Honoka, I just felt like I was clinging desperately to the past when all I wanted to do was move forward. Every text gave me panic attacks, Umi-chan. I didn’t mean to hurt the two of you. I just wanted it to stop.”

Umi opened her mouth to reply, but immediately thought better of it. Kotori’s emotions deserved to carry more weight in her heart, so she swallowed whatever objection she might have conjured and allowed it to fester in the pit of her stomach.

The silence was only dulled by the sound of a door clicking open, hesitant footsteps towards the kitchen as though the hardwood was laden with landmines. You only remained a moment, long enough to rifle through the fridge for something or other and then return from wherever she’d come, all in an awkward, jilted silence.

Umi watched You step out of the room, closing the door behind her gently. Suddenly words came to her, if not the ones she expected.

"Kotori, do you..." Her voice trailed off, the words caught in her throat. “You know…”

"Love her?" Umi nodded, and in reply Kotori put a finger to her chin, humming thoughtfully. It would seem theatrical given the heat of the moment had only just faded, but it was just that same old playful Kotori. The thought carried with it a warm nostalgia. "Maybe," she finally concluded, taking a moment to taste that answer on her tongue. "I'm not sure yet. But... I'd like to someday. She treats me well."

Umi laughed, and it tasted bitter. "I desperately wish I could approach romance the way you do."

“I can’t comment on that without seeming bitter,” Kotori replied wryly. “At the same time though… If you did approach it like I did, then you wouldn't be Umi-chan, would you?"

"You think so?"

"Yeah. I don’t need to tell you this, but… you aren't good at moderation, you don't know how to take your time getting somewhere. Your feelings are all or nothing, and that's what makes you who you are. Honoka’s always been the same way. You two make a good match," she concluded with a knowing smile that brought Umi's cheeks to a blossom.

“Well, we do share some things in common,” Umi added with an empathetic smile. “Neither of us know how to express ourselves. We let it build up and up, until…”

She simulated an explosion with her hands, a juvenile facsimile of its sound escaping her lips. The act was enough to elicit a humored laugh from Kotori, lifting Umi’s spirits for the first time that night.

“We could learn something from Honoka,” Umi continued, her tone self-effacing. “She wouldn’t dream of hiding her adoration of you.” Except then Umi felt her phone vibrating, and her stomach sank once again. Pulling it from her pocket and examining the photo on the screen confirmed her worst fears - it was Honoka. “Speak of the devil,” she added in a grim voice.

“You should answer it,” Kotori spoke softly. She gave Umi a gentle smile, just like so many that she’d given when they were younger. But Umi shook her head, allowing the phone to continue ringing until it went to voicemail.

“I know, I’m probably scaring her to death. But… I hurt her, Kotori. I said things I’ll never be able to take back. I can’t just act like things are okay after that.”

“You don’t have to,” Kotori replied. “You just have to be honest. Honoka-chan isn’t a saint, none of us are. She needs the Umi-chan that shows her the way forward, not the one that lets her look back. Just like in Muse, remember?”

Umi smiled wearily.

“We both know I was never very good at it, Kotori.”

“You were exactly what she needed,” Kotori asserted. “And you still are. Go on.”

She gestured back to Umi’s cellphone, which was picked up with shaky hands that struggled to flick through her contacts until she found the name in question.

“I thought you were tired of being the strong one,” Umi observed as her thumb hovered over the call button. “But you’re doing it again.”

“No,” Kotori replied. “I’ve said my piece. All that pain and hurt, that was real. But it doesn’t mean I don’t want you both to be happy.” She gestured toward the phone, and Umi tapped the call button.

The phone rang once, then twice. Each sound seemed to Umi like nails on a chalkboard, but they continued unabated. Five, six. A sigh of relief that Honoka’s voicemail was within reach. And then…

“Where are you?! I’ve been so worried!”

The sound of Honoka’s voice came to Umi like a chorus might herald an angel’s descent. A tear formed in the corner of Umi’s eye, then another, each portending the arrival of an ever-increasing deluge. All her emotions poured out in one rush, wordless yet more honest than anything else she’d ever told Honoka. There on Kotori’s worn-out couch, Umi heaved sobs greater than any she’d ever known.

And then, with all the soothing kindness left in the world, Honoka spoke again.

“Come back, Umi. I forgive you.”

viii.

Fear.

That was the one thing in this world Umi knew best.

Pure anxiety, coursing through her veins at every little sign of danger or failure, no matter how myopic they may be. It was the one thing Umi felt when they’d planned this trip, and its shadow had lingered over her all the while like a raincloud.

Yet now, stood outside the hotel door where Honoka had been fretting for her safety all night, Umi felt only a strange sense of serenity. Perhaps it was a result of the awe she felt for Kotori, who had shown strength where Umi had only shown weakness. She wanted to muster some of that acceptance for herself.

The rap on the door came quietly, less an announcement of her presence than a faint suggestion. There was no answer, at least for a moment. Umi stood in the hallway, breathing in the stale air as she waited to confront her second mess that day.

One failed friend down, one to go. At least, that was how she compartmentalized it.

Finally the door opened, its hinges squeaking like a nest of rats. On the other side was Honoka, eyes puffed and reddened and cheeks stained with her tears. Neither of them said a word, until they both did.

“I’m sorry-”

“I’m sorry-”

Their words collided, then fell away intertwined. The resulting silence was bereft of catharsis for either of them. Honoka coughed.

“Is that…?” Honoka pointed toward Umi’s jacket, one that was deeply familiar to them both.

“It’s Kotori’s,” Umi replied. “She let me borrow it. I… saw her just now. I’m so sorry, Honoka, I-”

Honoka shook her head. When had she become so serene?

“Don’t apologize. Just come in.”

Umi did as she was told, stepping past the threshold of the door tepidly as if some forcefield might repel her. Perhaps the thought was preferable to confrontation, but all that met her was an empty hotel room, just as she had left it.

“I… have a lot I want to say,” she began unprompted. Her feet led her to the foot of the bed. She stood in front of it, afraid to commit to her course of action yet knowing what had to be done. “I owe you an explanation. For everything-”

Before she could sit down, however, Honoka had wrapped Umi up in her arms from behind, squeezing tightly. Her head nestled into the crook of Umi’s shoulder, and it took a moment for Umi to realize why: Honoka’s wracking sobs were muffled by the wool of Kotori’s jacket, staining the fabric a dark color. Tepidly, Umi placed her arms against Honoka’s, unsure of what else she could do. The action felt pathetic, but it was at least something.

“I was so scared,” Honoka whimpered. “I thought… I thought something had happened, that you’d… that you’d…”

Honoka choked on the words, but Umi knew what she was trying to say. It was the same thing she’d feared six years ago, that one evening in New York City when Honoka had gotten on the wrong train and receded from Umi’s view into a dark abyss.

That had been the first time she knew true, unadulterated terror. She never wanted Honoka to feel anything like it.

“You can be the one to slap me this time, if you want,” Umi remarked. Honoka let out a faint laugh in reply, sniffling slightly.

“I’m tempted, but I’m sure Kotori-chan already read you the riot act. I’m just glad you’re back. You’re not the only one who has things to say. I have some things I need to get off my chest. I… also owe you a few apologies too.”

Her grip on Umi lessened, and finally she pulled away, leaving a yawning, frigid cold where once had been her touch. She stepped toward the bed and sat down, gesturing for Umi to join her. Bemusement painted on her face by Honoka’s words, Umi had little choice other than to do the same.

“Honoka, you haven’t done anything wrong. You…” A yawn, long and drawn out as Umi realized just how exhausted she really was. The mattress felt so comfortable, so inviting. “You have nothing to apologize for.”

A small smile crossed Honoka’s lips.

“You should get some rest, Umi. This can wait.”

“But you said-”

“I’ll be saying a lot of things,” Honoka interrupted with a laugh. “But it should be when we’re in a good state of mind, I think. I’ll keep worrying about you if you don’t sleep.”

Umi stared wide-eyed, struck by this mature, almost nurturing side of Honoka she’d never before witnessed.

“You sound like Kotori,” she noted absently.

“I’m sure I have a lot to learn from her,” Honoka replied. Sadness creased the corners of her eyes for the briefest moment, then vanished once more.

Umi sensed in that moment that Honoka was right - they weren’t in a place to negotiate the ways they’d hurt and failed one another. She heaved a sigh, then stood up to brush her teeth.

“We all do, I think.”

Rest came easily to them both, an inevitability after a day marred by strife. Honoka drifted off first, on top of the covers and flat on her back as her eyes fixated on the ceiling until finally the weight of her eyelids overcame them. Umi curled up under the sheets not soon after, pulling them up to her neck as though they might act as a shield from her mistakes, but passed out quickly nevertheless.

Her dreams were vibrant, but in all the wrong hues. The day’s events looped again and again, played before her on a movie theater screen, but the camera angles always seemed to train in on her, just waiting for her to hurt someone yet again. It was as though it was only an inevitability, and though the rational parts of Umi’s mind understood that was only her anxiety, here in the mire of her subconscious the forest was never easy to see for the trees. She tossed and turned, mind plagued by fears for Honoka and for Kotori, that her love for Honoka had unintentionally become a weapon she’d wielded against the people dearest to her.

It wasn’t until she was shown the memory of Honoka’s kiss that Umi’s eyelids ripped themselves apart, reintroducing her to the land of the living. Her breathing came heavy, first in fits and starts and then with regularity. In, out. In, out. Her eyes fixated on the ceiling, anything to anchor her in reality.

Finally, she looked around the room. Honoka wasn’t there. The silence felt eerie, like a premonition of something worse to come. It was just her anxiety, though. As always.

With quiet at least came an opportunity to shrug on her clothes, a summery blouse and matching skirt, both a navy blue. She washed up, taking her time to get her appearance just right, until she heard the faint sound of the door clicking open. When she left the bathroom, she was greeted by the sight of Honoka in a loose-fitting sweater, carrying a tray of croissants and coffee.

“I, uh… thought you might like something to eat,” Honoka explained with a sheepish smile. “Call it a peace offering.”

“Honoka, if either of us should have a peace offering right now it’s me,” Umi replied, eyebrows furled and hands fidgeting with the hem of her blouse. “This was unnecessary.”

“Well, I wanted to, so... too bad.” Honoka childishly stuck her tongue out as a means of punctuating the thought, then set the tray down on the foot of the bed. The coffee was piping hot, as evidenced by a thin strand of steam tracing a line from the hole of the lid all the way to the ceiling.

Umi heaved a sigh and reached for a cup, taking a whiff of its aroma to rouse herself from what remained of her grogginess.

“I got it how you like it,” Honoka explained, her face hopeful like that of a child looking for approval. “Black, three sugars.”

The corners of Umi’s lips tugged downward for the briefest second, until she forced them back up.

“Thank you, Honoka. It’s perfect.”

As they sat there, making idle small talk and nibbling on their croissants, there was a flicker of peace. They still had so much to say, but they could pretend none of it lingered in the air around them like a miasma for the moment. It continued unabated until at last Honoka set down her coffee and looked to Umi, a faint glimmer in her eyes.

“Our tickets back home are for tomorrow night,” she spoke softly.

“Yeah, they are.” Umi stared for a moment, attempting to read Honoka’s expression.

“I was thinking… if we’re going to talk things through, maybe we could do it somewhere pretty. Somewhere like... “ She gestured something vaguely resembling an explosion with her hands, tugging forth a flicker of a laugh from Umi’s parted lips. “Really cool! And French! You know?”

At least Umi could take some solace in the fact that even now, Honoka remained Honoka to the death. Smiling to herself, she reached for her bag and dug out a map of the city. She unfolded it across their laps, and traced a finger around the highway that marked Paris’ borders.

“Where were you thinking? The Eiffel Tower?”

“Nah,” Honoka replied, an eye roll for dramatic effect. “Too easy. I wanna do something that isn’t so kitschy.”

“And where did you learn that word?” Umi asked sardonically.

“From you complaining about all the string lights I hung in my apartment last year,” Honoka replied with a gentle jab of the elbow. The action carried with it warm familiarity, the kind they’d been missing the last two days.

“Well, I’ll leave it up to you then.” Umi gestured toward the map. “Your pick.”

Honoka’s tongue peaked out from the corner of her lips as she analyzed the map, gaze flitting about between various attractions marked down on it.

“I found it!” Her finger pressed down hard on a green patch, just below the Seine. Umi locked her gaze onto it as well, attempting to make out the French name.

“That’s…”

“The Luxembourg Gardens! Doesn’t it sound cool?”

“That’s by Kotori’s place,” Umi finished, unaffected by Honoka’s exclamation. The corners of her lips fell victim to gravity, tugged back downward.

“Oh,” Honoka noted lamely. She carried a sad smile with her, one that begged for sympathy. “I didn’t realize.”

Umi couldn’t find herself to press what she feared was a falsehood, not after all she’d said and done herself. She nodded, placed a hand on Honoka’s shoulder.

“Come on, let’s go get ready.”

ix.

With morning in Paris often came rain, and today was no exception. Though it had since abated, its effects were evident in the dew that crowned every blade of grass under their feet, in the deep grey of the clouds that hung above them, the thin layer of fog that encompassed them.

It gave the city a feeling of surreality, as though it were less a palpable, concrete place than a mirage her subconsciousness had constructed on her behalf. A purgatory, of sorts, but this morning Umi wasn’t so bereft of hope that she’d think of it as such. No, it was… liminal, maybe. Honoka had used that word once. Granted, it was to describe an empty Taco Bell and Umi wasn’t even sure that Honoka knew what it meant, but it felt right all the same.

They walked along some old road, this time taking a much more scenic route around Ile Saint-Louis, cutting across a river to the east and by a zoo, where Honoka excitedly pointed at a large sign depicting a tiger roaming in the wild - a far cry from the city it now found itself contained to. As Umi laughed and told Honoka to calm down, offering up a hollow reassurance that they’d visit soon as recompense, she thought that perhaps she might share some common thread of empathy that linked her to the tiger as though it were an isthmus between them. Then she realized that the thought was silly - she could leave wherever she wanted. The only thing binding her to this place and to Tokyo before it was herself, and the love she felt for Honoka.

Finally, they seemed to hone in on the gardens when a bright boom of green overtook the horizon, peaking forth from between buildings and street lamps until it all unfolded before them like a picturebook come to life. Umi never seemed to notice the greenery splotching the Tokyo landscape, yet here in Paris, the rain made it come alive and captivate her with its vibrancy.

As soon as she saw the same sight, Honoka turned around and captured Umi’s hands in her own, a bright and genuine smile crossing her face.

“This is what I wanted to see when I came here, you know. All this life and history… it makes me feel like I’m just one small part of something so much bigger. Doesn’t it comfort you too?”

Umi smiled humoredly, her eyebrows furled in a performative kind of anxiety.

“In some ways, I think so. In other ways it just makes me want to go back inside and read a book. Too much… everything, really. It scares me at times. I wish I had your bravery.”

“Well,” Honoka replied with warmth in her voice, “that’s why I’m here. To rub a little bit off onto you. Come on.”

Honoka dropped one of Umi’s hands but tightened her grip on the other, then began to lead her toward the gardens. The skin of her palm was soft and pliable like the skin of a ripened peach, and Umi lingered on the sensation of it until she was suddenly jerked forward, pulling her back into reality and into a frantic dash to keep up with Honoka’s boundless energy.

By the time they reached the garden Umi was panting something fierce, but Honoka seemed to have been hardly phased - before Umi could blink, she pulled the two of them down onto the grass, positioned on their backs as they stared up at the sky. Gray clouds found their way across the sky as they slowly began to dissipate, as though the sky itself were turning a page to reveal golden rays of sunlight. Umi squinted, pulling her right hand into the air to obscure it from her vision. Her left stayed clasped onto Honoka.

“It’s beautiful here,” Honoka mentioned idly as she craned her head, staring sidelong at the crowds of tourists and young Parisian couples ambling along paths straddled by intricate rows of flowers, every different hue imaginable seemingly exploding into a panoply of color.

“Yeah,” Umi concurred. She didn’t say anything more, electing for once to resist her urge to speak for the sake of filling a silence. Instead, she admired the scenery for a few moments alongside Honoka, until finally she’d thought of something suitable.

“You… mentioned you had some things to say. But I was hoping that I could get one thing out of the way first.”

“Sure,” Honoka replied after a second, no particular urgency or concern in her voice.

“I…” Umi frowned as her voice trailed off, scouring the corners of her mind for the right thing to say. “I told you Kotori didn’t care about you. I tried to compare myself to her. But then I went to see her. That was wrong of me for a million different reasons. Do you resent me for it?”

Umi craned her head to the side, just in time to see Honoka shake her head slowly. Her expression might have seemed vacant to the uninitiated, but in reality it was just her own particular kind of contemplation.

“No, I don’t. It was wrong, sure, but… you needed to see her. Maybe more than I did. And in a lot of ways that’s my fault.”

“How is that your fault?” Umi asked, incredulousness in her voice.

“I dragged us here, Umi,” Honoka replied. “I’m not a saint either.”

“Kotori said something like that,” Umi noted. She wasn’t sure if the thought of Honoka becoming more like Kotori was amusing or disconcerting. “But still… I had my own reasons for coming, you know. They weren’t anything I’m proud of.”

“We’re in the same boat, then.”

Umi turned to look at Honoka, who wore a look of empathy and sadness all swirled together.

“What do you mean?”

The words came slowly, trickling from Umi’s lips as though her mouth was a faucet she couldn’t quite bring herself to shut off. Rather than providing succor, all these questions ever seemed to do was cause her heart to pound out of her chest. But for now, she wasn’t afraid of the answer.

Just afraid of her own reaction.

“You know, Umi…” Honoka’s voice trailed off. She laughed to herself under her breath, as though she’d just heard a joke at her own expense. “I think in a lot of ways, your support has become a crutch.”

Umi pursed her lips. “Honoka, all I do is yell and lecture you. My support isn’t much to write home about.”

“No, it is.” Honoka emphatically shook her head to punctuate the thought, but given their current position it looked more like she was making a feeble attempt at rolling around in the grass. Her hand clenched Umi’s tighter. “You follow me, everywhere I go. Everything I ask, you do. You became an idol for me, you went to school near me… You followed me here.”

“I was happy to do it all, Honoka,” Umi whispered. Her voice was frail, weak. She saw where Honoka was going with this, and she didn’t like the ending. “Did it just hurt you? All of that?”

“I hurt myself. Everything you did only helped, but…”

“But?”

Honoka stared up at the pale blue blanketing the earth overhead. Her eyelids blinked slowly, once, then twice. Her chest swelled up with a heavy breath of air, all of which she exorcised from herself in a grandiose sigh.

“I was scared of you leaving, Umi. I always have been, but when Kotori-chan decided to go to Paris, I didn’t know what to do. I felt like I’d fallen so far from Love Live, and I was scared that after all that, I’d just wind up being alone. A has-been.”

“That’s the way I’m supposed to feel, not you,” Umi replied with a wry laugh. “You’re… incredible, kind, inspiring. You’re good with people, unlike me. There’s no reason for you to end up alone.”

Honoka didn’t immediately respond, preferring instead to allow the faint sounds of birds chirping and children playing to seep into the cracks of their universe, reminding them of all the life around them. A goldfinch flew overhead, darting through the air with no urgency whatsoever.

It seemed that no matter how dire things became between the two of them, the universe ticked along just fine.

“Yesterday, you told me I was selfish because I decide things for you,” Honoka finally began. Her words were slow and measured, coming forth at a steady clip. “That I’m always looking to Kotori-chan, and taking you for granted.”

Umi sighed. “That was stupid of me to say, Honoka-”

“No it wasn’t,” Honoka interrupted. “You were right. I thought about that all night. Even while I was worrying about you. It kept replaying over and over, making me sick to my stomach. I’ve talked you into following me, over and over again, never looking back. You could’ve gone to Kyoto, Umi. Learned more, not have had to worry about me. You could’ve found someone to take care of you.”

Honoka’s words suddenly found falter as soon as she spoke about love, her voice fraying at the seams. Umi’s blood ran cold, entirely aware of what was going through her mind.

“And… the kiss?”

“I…” Honoka finally sat up, wresting her hand from Umi’s grip as though the very physical contact would scorch her skin. Her voice ran cold as a glacier. “I didn’t want you to leave.”

Somewhere, somehow, Umi had always assumed that the kiss had meant something, that it had been a signifier that whatever was between them, that it was special. She’d let it linger on her lips for four years, gripping it as though it were a tether connecting her to the love of her life.

And now, after all this time, Umi knew the truth. Her knuckles burned bright white, branding crescent moons into the skin of her palms.

“That was it?”

There wasn’t anger in her voice, not even the pure, raw hurt that she thought she should be feeling. Instead she just felt numb, like she’d been submerged in arctic waters along with all of her emotions. They were drowned out, floating just beyond her reach no matter how much she stretched her hand out toward them. All that was left was the feeling of her fingertips going numb, a chill racing down each vertebrae of her spine one by one.

Was that it?

“No, no,” Honoka frenziedly replied. Her hands reached up to wave at Umi, attempting to beckon her forth before she could recede from Honoka’s reach. “It meant something, but…”

Now a hand reached to the back of her neck to scratch at the stray hairs there nervously, but the sheepish smile that should have accompanied the action was nowhere to be found. The sight drew Umi forth from her underwater prison, as she wracked the corners of her brain for the one memory she kept carefully maintained, so that she could replay it over and over. Much like an old piece of parchment might, the memory had faded and frayed at the edges, worn down from repeated use. Its colors had been dulled to a pale, sepia-like hue, and everything had become a blur, messy and out of focus - everything, that was, except for Honoka. She was still just as crystalline as she was that autumn evening, ethereal in the way that she stood mere inches from Umi yet felt as though she were a universe apart.

“I remember what you said,” Umi muttered. The words didn’t feel like they were her own, but she meant them all the same. “‘I want to stay like this forever.’ Did you mean that?”

Honoka stared, eyes wide and lips parted ever so slightly. Maybe she was surprised that she’d made such an enduring impact, or rather that Umi would ever acknowledge it.

“I did. I did, more than I’ve ever meant anything in my life. I promise.” A long pause, an inhale, an exhale. In with honesty, out with pretense. “I just wasn’t ready for everything that came with that. All I could see was what was right in front of me. I didn’t want to think about anything else, about the implications of… everything. High school, Love Live, college. You were always there, letting me lead the way.”

In the distance, a crowd of children were laughing and yelling. Umi listened, grounding herself in reality. They were okay. Everything was going to be fine. Her therapist had told her something once, years ago now. If she ever felt suffocated by the whirlwind of thoughts always whipping around in her mind, to just listen. There was more than the constant calculation, the emotions kept bottled up and tucked away for years on end, the sheer crippling terror that came with vulnerability. There was life, birds chirping, kids playing.

There was more than all this heartache and fear. She’d be fine.

“It was because I loved you, Honoka.” The words came effortlessly, flowing from her lips like honey. They felt right, in a way few things ever seemed to. “I still do.”

Honoka let loose a smile, small and yet containing multitudes more than any other she’d given. The corners of her eyes were creased with so many feelings, and for a split second Umi felt as though she might be able to make some of them out.

Though whether they were true or just what she wanted to see, she wasn’t entirely sure.

“I… I think I’ve always known. In the back of my mind, I mean,” Honoka began slowly. It seemed as though she’d practiced this speech before, with the way she carefully considered each syllable before shaping it. “It was staring me in the face, the way you acted around me. But I never wanted to believe that anyone could see me the way you do, not after I’d become...” She waved a hand vaguely at her body, furrowing her brows. “This. The girl who won Love Live.”

Umi found herself leaning toward Honoka, leaving precious few inches between them. The summer breeze picked up Honoka’s scent, wafting it towards Umi. It smelled of rosemary and golden wheat.

“You’re more than that, Honoka,” she insisted emphatically.

The words carried weight, sharpened to a razor thin edge with the intent of puncturing every self-depreciating thought inside Honoka’s head. It was ironic, she thought to herself with no small amount of bitter irony, that many of those thoughts were undoubtedly the result of her own kind of tough love.

She had a lot to make amends for. They both did.

“I wonder about that sometimes,” Honoka replied. A bitter laugh underscored the confession. “I feel like I peaked, back then. That was when all three of us were together, when I fulfilled my biggest dream. I never moved on from that, even when Kotori-chan did. I… I think I knew you were in love with me, and I took advantage of that. So that I wouldn’t have to let go of you too.”

There was a long pause, a silence whose cracks Honoka’s truth could seep into. Tears pricked at the corners of Honoka’s eyes, but she didn’t let them fall, and Umi didn’t wipe them away.

“Sometimes I wish we’d never started μ’s,” Honoka whispered after a moment longer. “I never would have hurt you like I have.”

Umi wanted to dive into Honoka, embracing her and shielding her from all this pain and doubt. Even at her lowest moments, when she’d screamed all her frustration out at Honoka, all Umi had ever wanted was to protect her.

But she couldn’t. Back in high school, what Kotori had needed was Honoka’s selfishness. Now, Honoka needed the same from Umi. She took her time constructing the words in her mind, layer by layer and brick by brick.

“Were you in love with Kotori back then?”

The words had hit their mark. Honoka winced, slumped slightly. The sight reminded Umi of Kotori’s confession the night before. Bile crept up her throat, but she pushed it back.

“I don’t know,” Honoka admitted slowly. “I thought so, but when I saw her yesterday, I realized that what I thought was love was just… obsession, for everything that she started representing to me. And guilt that I’d made her stay. Wanna know the worst part? When I realized she had a girlfriend, I felt relieved. Like I didn’t owe her anything anymore.”

Finally, Umi scooted a bit closer. Just an inch or two, enough that she could gently press her shoulder against Honoka’s. Inwardly, she acknowledged her own version of that relief, a happiness that Kotori had been able to move on from her own feelings - something Umi had never been able to do herself.

“You never owed her anything, Honoka. She left when she was ready.”

“And what about you?”

Umi turned, to see Honoka staring at her with a miserable, pathetic expression that she’d never seen before. For all those years of following Honoka around like a sick puppy, Umi had never imagined that Honoka would ever look at her like this, in vulnerable desperation. The sight gave her pause, a reticence that she could only push deep down.

“I don’t know if I’ll ever be ready.” The answer came with a droll smile, lips curling skyward and a small twinkle in the corner of Umi’s eyes that hid the uncertainty in her heart. She’d spent so long dreaming of this moment, and yet now that it was here, present and real and vivid, it seemed less momentous than it did inevitable. And as much as it ran counter to every fibre of her being and bone in her body, she knew that she needed to be honest. The truth would set them both free, or something corny like that.

“The only question is if you want me around, and if you feel the same for me. I… don’t know if I can take not knowing anymore.”

Honoka sniffled, then pressed back up against Umi.

“Is it okay if I don’t know yet? Could you wait?”

Each word buoyed Umi’s heart more and more, lifting it above the thick smog that all those years of yearning for Honoka’s love had wrought.

“I’ve been waiting all my life, Honoka. I can wait a bit longer.”

“Thank you,” Honoka whispered. “You deserve better, but… I don’t know. I thought I understood all my feelings, but I’m not so sure anymore. All I know is that I feel comfortable when you’re around. Safe, looked after. Like my flaws aren’t completely irredeemable. And I want to protect you from yours. That’s a start, right?”

“That’s all I’ve ever wanted to make you feel,” Umi responded. Even given the murkiness of Honoka’s feelings, the very act of giving form to her own provided Umi with more relief than she’d ever felt in all her years. “I… I really think you’re incredible, Honoka. I love everything about you. Even if I struggle to show it.”

In that moment Honoka turned to Umi, her eyes wide and vulnerable, brimming with more feelings than Umi could begin to make out. She was so close, not even a foot away, her lips soft and red and beckoning Umi forth. Honoka was offering what Umi had yearned desperately for, five years of her life all reaching a singular zenith.

But it wasn’t right. Umi knew that, no matter how much she wanted to believe this was the moment for her to express her love for Honoka in the most honest way she knew. Honoka needed clarity, self-understanding. She needed closure, and none of those were things that Umi could provide; only time bore that power.

So she stared at Honoka for the briefest moment, lips parted, before she pursed them shut and took a deep breath through her nostrils, anything to ground herself in reality, far away from the worst of her impulses.

They would be okay. Just not yet.

Perhaps Honoka realized the war waging in Umi’s mind, or perhaps she was unintentionally clairvoyant when she smiled one of those soft smiles and laid back down on the grass, spreading her arms and legs wide as though she were in the midst of some vain attempt at making a snow angel. One hand found its perch on Umi’s own, clandestinely taking hold of it. Neither acknowledged the touch, but Umi welcomed it.

“So… what now?”

Umi turned to Honoka, who looked back up at her expectantly.

“I didn’t really think that far ahead,” she admitted sheepishly. “Did you have anything in mind?”

Honoka stared upward for a moment, expression vacant, then shook her head.

“Nah, not really. I just wanna do… something before we go, you know? Our flight’s soon.”

Umi nodded.

“Yeah, we’ll have to head out pretty soon after dinner.” She reached to check the email she’d received with her tickets, then thought better of it and tucked her phone away in her purse again. Somehow, looking at them felt wrong. No point thinking about the future when the present was already here.

Umi paused, thought for a moment. Her mind wandered back to the tear-soaked haze of last night, to right before she’d left Kotori’s apartment. There was something Kotori had said that rang vividly in her mind, even now.

“Let me know if you two are in the area, okay?”

She’d said it as casually as she could, but Umi recognized the faint glimmer of a plea in Kotori’s eyes, much like the one they’d held when she’d first told Honoka she was going to Paris their second year of high school.

“Actually… I do have one thought.” She pulled her phone out from her purse again, clicking on the phone app and scrolling through her contacts before she found what she was looking for. A few frenzied taps of her thumbs later, and she’d fired off a text. The response came back more swiftly than she could have hoped for, and she smiled to herself.

Even after all this time, after everything they’d done and the things that were never said, Kotori was willing to drop everything for them. The thought warmed her heart.

“What is it?”

Honoka looked at Umi curiously, her eyes straying between Umi’s phone and her face.

“I hope you don’t mind, but… I told Kotori we were here.”

The slight droop of Honoka’s eyelids betrayed her anxiety at the thought.

“Why? I don’t think she’d want to talk to me, not after…”

Though she trailed off, the intent was perfectly clear. Umi put a hand to her shoulder, and squeezed it lightly.

“She wants to, and I’m not the only one that deserves closure.” Umi looked to the palace that sprawled out in front of the green, then turned back to Honoka. “Want to take a walk around for a bit? Clear our heads?”

Honoka smiled softly, then nodded. “Yeah, that sounds nice.”

The next while passed by them in a bloom of color and vibrant hues, greens and pinks like brash paint strokes in a Renoir. Uncharacteristically, Honoka wasn’t bounding ahead but rather taking her time to admire the scenery, drinking it in like the expensive bottles of wine Umi got at restaurants but Honoka never had the taste for.

After what must have been ten or fifteen minutes at most, the two of them were strolling by a peony bush when Umi caught sight of Kotori. She wore a long, flowing sundress streaked with the same colors as the flowers that surrounded her, and surveyed the gardens a brief moment before taking her seat and pulling out her phone. Seconds later Umi received the text, a brief “i’m here :)” that served as their cue.

Umi put her phone away and placed a hand on Honoka’s shoulder, gentle yet firm in its intent.

“Go talk to her, Honoka.”

She earned a surprised look from Honoka, whose mouth parted into a small o.

“But what about-”

“I had yesterday,” Umi interrupted. She squeezed Honoka’s shoulder. “This is you and Kotori’s time, not mine. I’ll be here. Okay?”

Honoka turned to Kotori, far off in the distance, then back to Umi. Her eyes widened, searching for that extra push she needed to shrug off her anxiety and go to Kotori. She found it in Umi’s smile, so genuine and empathetic that it sent her running in Kotori’s direction, hands waving and skip buoyant. It reminded Umi of the effervescence that Honoka had worn like a second skin back in high school, one that had slowly been chipped away at by time and cold, sobering reality. Yet here Honoka was, taking back some small amount of that for her present-day self. The sight brought joy to Umi’s face.

They remained there for a while, not long but hardly short either. Honoka alternated between sitting on the bench beside Kotori and moving around on her feet in front of it, like she had so many things to say and so much time to make up for that she could hardly contain it all. Finally, she began returning to Umi, finally drawing Kotori’s attention to her.

Umi smiled, waved. Kotori waved back. She held up a thumb and a pinkie to her ear, miming a phone, and mouthed out something that Umi assumed was “call?”. Umi nodded, then mimicked the gesture as a form of agreement.

They never mentioned that moment again, but for a short time, Umi felt as though they’d had an entire conversation through the expressions they made right before Umi departed with Honoka.

“Take care of her,” Kotori seemed to say with that fey little smile she’d always worn so well.

“I will,” Umi replied with a curt nod.

Kotori stared for a moment. A pleased look crossed over her face, and then she waved one more time.

With that, Umi knew it was time. She turned to Honoka, and with a nod of agreement from them both, they made their way from the park, none the worried for wherever their path might take them. They’d agreed to make the most of the day, and neither was prepared to renege on their promise.

That was how their feet found their way to age-old cobblestone, lining a street as though some thirteenth century city planner had tossed them about with little thought. Eventually the two of them made a game out of trying to jump from cobblestone to cobblestone, treating them as though the cracks between them were lava. Umi skipped from one to the next, holding out her hands for balance, and all the while both of them laughed at the absurdity of how they must have looked to those passing by or sitting in cafes along the side of the street. Even Umi, in all her self-consciousness, paid little heed to their thoughts until finally she fell over, prompting Honoka to rush to her side in order to take hold of her.

“Thanks,” Umi offered up sheepishly, relaxing into Honoka’s embrace for the brief moment she allowed herself before pulling away, dusting off her skirt for effect.

“I was trying out my best sauve protector thing,” Honoka replied. An almost childlike grin lit up her face, playing across it like lights on a tree. “Did it work?”

“I was smitten,” Umi said wryly. She gave Honoka a gentle check with her shoulder, then began walking along. Honoka took a moment, then raced to catch up.

“I just want to be the kind of person you can rely on.” Honoka spoke uncharacteristically solemnly, lips pursed and eyes fixed on the road ahead. Umi turned to her, bemused.

“Okay, now you’ve got me curious just what Kotori said to you.”

Honoka laughed, her step regaining a little bit of that buoyancy it always seemed to have.

“I might keep that to myself,” she said. “For the time being, anyways. Though…”

“Though?” Umi asked, an eyebrow arched quizzically.

“She did say one thing that stuck out,” Honoka admitted. Her words were slow, thoughtful. “She said that if I keep my eyes on you, I’ll never lose track of where I am. And that I should be that for you, too.”

Umi’s lips curled skyward, and she offered up a small laugh under her breath.

“Kotori says a lot of things. A lot of them sound far too sage-like for my own comfort.”

“Well… I agree with her,” Honoka replied. “I don’t think I’ve been doing enough of that, recently. Keeping my eyes on you, I mean.”

For a moment, their eyes met. Umi smiled, genuinely and more sincerely than she had in what felt like ages. She’d always thought that prescience was a concept beyond Honoka’s ability, but as always, her oldest friend had managed to surprise her yet again.

Umi should have learned by now, really, but Honoka always seemed to keep her guessing. She liked that.

They walked along in silence for a while afterward, just enjoying the sights and sounds, along with each other’s company. Their bond was of the sort that held strongest when they allowed moments of silence to seep into the cracks. Honoka’s hand grazed Umi’s, then took it, not quite lacing their fingers together but keeping a solid grip all the same. When Umi turned to her, Honoka just offered up one of her usual smiles. Comforting, calming.

After a while, however, they began to notice their comfortable little silence fraying at the edges. A crowd seemed to echo out in the distance, little by little, first a faint static but soon a roaring thunder. Umi arched an eyebrow, attempting to make out anything of note in the distance.

“Is there a protest or something?”

Honoka hummed for a moment.

“Sounds too cheery for it. Maybe it’s somebody’s birthday?”

Umi gave Honoka an amused look.

“They’d have to be pretty popular, and… Wait, listen.”

Umi slowed to a stop with Honoka, and in the absence of their footsteps came the sound of a brass band.

“What is that?” She paused, thought. Her hand raced for her phone in her purse, taking it out and checking the date. Her mouth opened, forming a small o.

“What is it?” Honoka asked with concern, prodding Umi.

“It’s… it’s July fourteenth,” Umi replied slowly. A slow, guttural laugh built up in her chest, until it burst out all at once. Honoka looked to Umi with concern, but said little as Umi let it all out, all the absurdity of their pain and heartache, all the bizarre choices they’d made.

“How could we have been so wrapped up in ourselves that we didn’t even know?” Umi calmed down, but that same unbecoming smile still played on her lips. “It’s Bastille Day, Honoka.” She was met with a blank stare from Honoka, and elaborated. “It’s the biggest holiday of the year in France.”

“Oh! Should we check it out?”

Honoka beamed at Umi, that single look that managed to decimate all of Umi’s will every single time she saw it. But now, she welcomed it. She’d spent years wallowing in a love that was never returned, a sense of responsibility to her dearest friend that suffocated her time and time again. Yet on the outskirts of all that pain, all that sorrow, was life. It was trumpets and snares and roaring crowds. It was a celebration of freedom and of jubilance, honoring those who came and went long before Umi or Honoka had ever walked the earth.

And even though Umi didn’t know where they would go from here, as she looked into Honoka’s eyes she had a sense for the first time since high school that it was in the right direction. All she had to do was let Honoka take her hand, leave a kiss on her cheek, and lead the way.

“I’d like that. Let’s go.”