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There are things that Nene wants. Perfect fairytale moments that have been planned out for years in her head. She daydreams about them, cheek pillowed in her palm, eyes fixed out the window. Aoi giggles at her, waves hands in front of her face, and calls her a hopeless romantic.
Nene can't disagree. At one time, she would have waved her best friend off, giggling in return and insisting that wanting a fairytale couldn't be a BAD thing. All it meant was that she wouldn't settle for anything less than what made her happy.
At one time, she would have pressed her fingers to her own flushed cheeks, shook her head, and kept on fantasizing.
More recently, these dreams, these snippets of baseless perfection, snare around her heart. They close it in a vise, squeeze it until her chest feels hollow, until her eyes well over and she's catching her breath and blinking it all away because she's still in class and she has things to do and people that will pry if she shows up to the third floor girls' bathroom with puffy eyes and trembling fingers.
More recently, a particular boy has crept his way into these dreams. No one else compares.
Nene hasn't got a "type" any more. Or maybe she does, and it's a snarky, dark haired wonder. He dominates her daydreams, squashes any thoughts of other crushes.
(She watches his golden eyes go wide, pale cheeks flushed pink like the sunset streaked sky behind him, when she answers the door for their first date. Sees his hands clench, white knuckled, to stem their nervous shaking before he reaches one over to chance at holding her hand. Laughing over ice cream. Bumping shoulders in the park. Walking her back to her door and shuffling his feet before he cradles her face and leans in and-
All things he can't give to her.)
Nene has accepted that her feelings for Hanako run deeper than an assistant, a friend, or a confidant. She'd accepted it, face buried in her soaked pillow, soft sobs muffled into the flower patterned fabric. She's been infatuated enough times to recognize what infatuation ISN'T.
And infatuation isn't the quiet tension that sparks in the air when they're alone. It isn't the care with which he speaks to her when he's serious, reassuring her and treasuring her presence. It isn't the way that she'd follow him into hell and high water and wade through it smiling.
No, that's something else entirely.
More recently, her romanticism cracks pain like a whip down her spine.
She can never have these fairytale moments with him, not even if he dares reciprocate what she feels. (And that particular thought punches the breath from her chest, numbs her legs down to the toes.)
It hurts. Tears a ragged hole in her chest because it's not fair he didn't deserve to die didn't deserve to have the life ripped out of him so soon without friends without love without HER-
It's not his fault. She KNOWS it's not his fault that he's dead and tethered here and trying to atone. She can't blame him for the fact the once she leaves school grounds, he exists only as the haunting whisper of thoughts at her ear, the phantom touch at the back of her neck that blisters goosebumps down her arms.
(But that doesn't mean that it stops hurting so much. She wonders, sometimes, when she has no tears left, when they've left her shivering and digging her nails into her skin, if she might die this way. If the way that this will break her heart can actually stop it entirely.)
~~~~~~
Nene decides, mouth set in a hard line, shoulders squared, back straight, that fairytales are bullshit.
She's wasting what little time she has feeling sorry for broken dreams that were never destined to be her reality.
Nene will take what she can get.
It will have to be enough.
~~~~~~
She watches his eyes gleam at the bag of donuts she hovers in front of him, promises to only give them to him if he'll let the Mokke win at least ONE game of cards. He agrees, snatching the bag from her hand and tearing into it. There's delight on his face when he bites into a donut that's still warm from the oven. He laughs when the Mokke cheer at winning a card game against the Glorious Seventh Wonder of the school. He flicks her forehead, chuckles and swats her hands away when she tries to flick him back, and asks if she's happy now.
She is.
It has to be enough.
~~~~~~
They sit on the roof of the school on a particularly clear night. Hanako gestures excitedly to the glittering points of light that fill the sky, explains constellations to her, educates her on the distances between the Earth and the other planets. He stands on the roof's ledge, bouncing on the balls of his feet, framed by starlight and looking so resoundingly ALIVE that Nene finds her throat closing up. (She imagines, in another life, that their first date would be to an observatory. That he'd thread his fingers through hers and tell her about his dreams of the moon and smile so wide that it'd take her breath away.)
He crowds her, leads her to the edge of the roof as if a few feet will help her to better see the pinpoint light of the planet he's pointing up at. His fingers are cold on her skin. His voice at her ear is exhilarated. He points over her shoulder, tells her to follow his fingertip to the North Star.
Instead she leans back, catches herself against the chilled line of his chest. His voice chokes out into silence, hand faltering in the sky in front of her. There's nothing but the whoosh of his breath for a long moment.
And then slowly, carefully, as if waiting for the other shoe to drop, waiting for her to tear herself away, he's wrapping his arms around her waist. It's tentative in a way that is so unlike the reckless confidence that lets him cling to her during the day. The way his hands shake is alien.
She nudges his fingers with her own, threads them together, asks him to continue. There's a tremor to his voice when he does, it sounds like desperately coaxing a wild animal not to run.
It has to be enough.
~~~~~~
When she walks into the bathroom, Hanko is sat on the windowsill, one arm propped on the leg he has pulled up to his chest. He's framed by sunset, half lit, half translucent, and so fully ethereal that she stops in her tracks. His hat is off, light catching on the shine of his dark hair. He's painted a brilliant gold, and when he turns it throws his features into sharp relief. Rounded cheeks and glinting eyes, a grin that he saves for her alone.
He looks more real like this. Less like the leader of a band of supernaturals. More like the boy that he died as.
The door swings shut behind Nene. She doesn't notice.
He pushes off the windowsill and floats lazily toward her. She watches his mouth move, words like cotton in her ears. Watches the upward quirk of his mouth when he smirks at her.
She crosses the room slowly. His eyebrows twitch in confusion when she reaches for him where he hovers above her. He lets her catch him by the collar of his uniform, lets her pull him down so his feet tap against the ground.
She tugs him in close, then, and kisses him.
It's just the press of her mouth to his. Simple, chaste, not at all like the dramatic passionate affair that she's always imagined. But it sets her heart thundering in her chest, blooming butterflies into her stomach and zinging electricity down her spine.
And when she pulls back, a cold puff of air blossoming against her mouth in his surprise, she finds him flushed and flustered, floundering for words.
But then cold hands find her cheeks, thumbs brushing at the pink of her skin, and he's leaning in again to find her mouth with his own.
And it's enough.
It's better than enough.