Archive of Our Own ^beta

Ayase Chihaya spent most of the morning of her twenty-third birthday watching her apartment building burn down.

She'd had enough time to save her cards, and her laptop, and a few necessities. The rest she didn't care much about, so she didn't feel as uprooted as she might have. The little flat had only been hers for a year; not nearly long enough to feel like home yet. And it wasn't her fault. An electrical mishap, a bad connection, nothing to do with her. That helped too.

The firefighters shouted to each other, spidering across its green walls with cables and rungs and fans of water, trying to hold the ruin back. They didn't think it was going to fall, one had told the group of distraught residents standing on a street corner down the block. It wouldn't fall, but the damage was bad enough that they would probably demolish it later anyway, in a safer and more controlled fashion. They should sort things out with their insurance providers and start looking for new places to live.

Many of them had already left to do that, knowing they would never feel safe there again even if it was miraculously made livable again in the future.

Chihaya felt curiously peaceful.

She sat for a long time, watched the erratic column of smoke rise into the sky and tear apart across conflicting winds. She breathed in the harsh, angry smell of it, imagined the texture of warm charcoal under her fingers. There were three poems about fire in the Hyakunin Isshu, but they were all love songs, and none of them spoke of this: the black smoke and the fierce blue June sky, a half-built life burning down to ash. This was no love song. There was no love to be found in this.

A lot of her neighbours were weeping, either off to themselves or on each others' shoulders. The kindest ones were going around offering comfort and care to the solitary outliers. There was perhaps love here, across the street from the conflagration, she supposed, but not of the fire kind, not the burning blistering kind that left things ruined and destroyed in its wake.

The closest she could find was the twenty-second poem, which used the language of wind rather than fire to describe this same destruction: autumn leaves, fragile and dry, ripe for the tearing tempest. It amused her for a moment that it was the twenty-second poem of the Hyakunin Isshu, remembered on the day she turned twenty-three, and all about endings. Maybe it was fate. She'd like that.

Kana-chan had taught her to look for moments of poetry in her life, and she had carried that to Kyoto and into her university major, a hybrid mixture of literature and history and linguistics that had eventually amalgamated into a general degree with a vague name. She hadn't gone for the sake of accreditation or accolades. She had gone to learn, and while it hadn't been as useful as she'd hoped at the beginning, it had given her some tools to help her recognize the right kind of moment when it happened, and that she did value.

There was no love here, no, but maybe there was room for poetry.

She shifted her knapsack on her shoulder and took a deep grey breath.

If this was an autumn of her life, then a winter was coming, and she needed to find somewhere to last it out. Somewhere warm, somewhere alive. Somewhere she would be welcome, but not too welcome; not so welcome that she would find it hard to leave when spring came.

A very short list.

*

Shinobu opened the door onto a mystery in the shape of a girl. It smelled like a forest fire and its bright teeth were bared in a sheepish smile.

Had they been teenagers still, she might have theatrically slammed the door in Chihaya's face, or sullenly asked what she was doing there, or any one of a dozen other things one might do to keep their rival at a safe distance. They had been rivals for a long time now, though, and something strange happens to rivals if they are together too much for too long: they become friends, while no less what they were before.

So instead, she just raised an eyebrow and waited, holding the edge of the door a little too tightly.

"Shinobu-chan," Chihaya said, and there was something strange about the way she said it, something too distant and withered to be the Chihaya she knew. "My place... there was a fire," she said. "Can I stay with you for a while?"

Shinobu had a dozen questions, and as many reasons to say No, sorry, find somewhere else. Instead, she stepped back and let the door swing open, stricken mute by the ashes in Chihaya's eyes.

Chihaya walked past her, dropped her shoes and bag in the entrance, and took three steps into the familiar confines of Shinobu's space before pausing and saying "I need to borrow your shower."

She nodded. Chihaya knew the way, and went off without another word.

Shinobu moved the bag to the guest room while she waited, and laid out a change of clothes for Chihaya that wouldn't smell like the fire. It was three in the afternoon, too early for dinner and too late for lunch, but she didn't know how long it had been since the fire started, how long it had been since the last meal Chihaya had made for herself in a kitchen that didn’t exist anymore. It couldn't hurt to pull out the pickled vegetables and leftover fish. For good measure, she dug around in the back until she found a small bottle of decent sake, and added it to the table along with cups for both of them.

When Chihaya emerged, dressed in a slightly too-small shirt with Snowmaru splashed across the front and a baggy pair of grey sweats, her soul had visibly returned to her. There was a smile around the edges of her eyes, and her shoulders were straight. Shinobu was relieved, but kept her face impassive.

"Sit down," she said imperiously. "Eat."

Chihaya obeyed meekly, but Shinobu could tell that while she was hungry enough to eat, she wasn't really tasting it. She even drank the sake, apparently not noticing what it was, and downed the refill when Shinobu cautiously provided it.

Predictably, that resulted in a swift and towering state of intoxication, Chihaya being the cheapest featherweight drunk Shinobu had ever met.

Shinobu just watched her while she ate, nodding along whenever the conversation called for it, abstractly noticing that Chihaya was a little wider across the shoulders than she was, bigger in the chest, a little longer in the torso, a little less muscular around her upper arms. The shirt really didn't fit very well at all. Poor Snowmaru's face was stretched into what looked—a little disconcertingly—like a leer. She made a face at it, then realized she was essentially glaring at Chihaya's chest and averted her eyes with a faint, annoyed blush.

It looks better on me, she decided mulishly.

"Y’know, it was pretty," Chihaya mumbled after a long silence, pushing her clean plates aside to lay her head on her arms. "I couldn't see much from outside, mostly just smoke, but I could tell that the insides were on fire. I could hear it, too, and smell it, and taste it. The smoke was bigger than the building. I should have been sad, but I wasn't, I don't why. All I could think about was how pretty it was. I watched it for hours before I came over."

Shinobu slightly regretted giving her the sake. She'd meant for it to relax Chihaya, maybe put her to sleep a little early like usual so she might feel better in the morning. She hadn't thought about this, though she should have. Chihaya had always been a sentimental drunk. They'd been out together to drink after official matches enough times for her to know the pattern.

"I'll start looking for a place tomorrow," Chihaya said softly, her words running into each other a little. "Sorry for imposing."

Shinobu bit her lip and scrunched her face up a little, then turned away so Chihaya wouldn't see. "I don't mind," she said at last, trying to make it sound as standoffish as she could. "You can stay as long as you need to."

Chihaya raised her head to stare at Shinobu, and it was really unfair, the way her clear brown eyes could see right through others on occasion even though she was so dense about people—and about herself—most of the time. Shinobu felt uncomfortably exposed, and wished again that she'd closed that door when she had the chance. Except she didn't, not really. She did, but she also didn't, and those feelings co-existed, and she'd long since been forced to expect conflicting feelings when it came to Ayase Chihaya.

"Thanks, Shinobu-chan," Chihaya said, very simply, with a wholly open and childlike face.

Shinobu clenched her teeth and endured, managing to at least nod and acknowledge it.

It would be nice to have her eternal rival in her debt, she thought, but even the thought rang hollow and false, and that was too aggravating to put into words.

"I have to go out and do some things," she said. "You stay here and get comfortable."

"When you get back, can we have a match?"

The sudden light around Chihaya made Shinobu blink. After all this time, after all the exhausting professional matches, after trading the queen title back and forth with Shinobu for years, she still loved the game so much. Shinobu kept it to herself, but she knew it was why they were still rivals, and still friends, after all this time: Shinobu still loved it, too.

She sighed heavily. "Okay."

The light intensified, until Chihaya was suddenly so bright Shinobu could hardly look at her without being blinded. To save her eyes, she stood up, grabbed her wallet off the sideboard, and stomped out.

She didn't actually have much to do, but now that she was out, she thought she might as well stock up the fridge, since it would have to support two people now. She'd need more sweets, and more pickles. Maybe it would be a good idea to stock up on earplugs, too, for the snoring.

Shinobu was not at all happy. About any of it.

*

Chihaya woke up in an unfamiliar bed, under an unfamiliar ceiling. The sky outside the window was dark, but it could have been just after sunset or minutes from dawn for all she knew.

She staggered out into the main area, her feet leading her to the washroom unerringly though she wasn't entirely conscious of where she was yet.

When she emerged, she found Shinobu sitting at her desk in the corner of the living room, headphones on and one foot on a pedal on the floor, typing furiously. Transcription wasn't a glamorous job, but Chihaya knew Shinobu liked it. She could do it from home, without input from anyone else, and all it required was a good ear and fast fingers. She hadn't had the patience for university like Chihaya, so she'd gone straight into the workforce after high school. Her parents were furious with her—their reclusive underachieving daughter—but Chihaya knew Shinobu was happier than she had ever been. Which wasn't saying much, honestly, but it said enough for Chihaya.

Chihaya opted to wait until Shinobu was finished with the segment she was working on. She fetched herself a glass of water and the book on Thai kap chabang poetry that had already been in her knapsack when she'd packed to flee the fire, and sat down at the dining room table. The sake hadn't left her system yet, so the words danced and wavered a bit as she squinted in an effort to parse them.

When the typing stopped, it was half an hour later and she was too engrossed in the dancing cadences of the Thai language and the colourful narratives of its poetry to notice. When Shinobu sat down beside her and jabbed her ruthlessly in the ribs with a finger, she jumped and banged her knees on the table's underside.

Shinobu laughed at her, but it wasn't mean-spirited. Chihaya had learned to tell the difference a long time ago.

"Can we have our match now?" Chihaya asked the moment she could speak again, suddenly energized.

"It's after midnight," Shinobu pointed out.

Chihaya stared at her, genuinely confused.

Shinobu dropped her chin and sighed, hiding what might have been a small smile behind her fringe. "All right, fine. Keep it down, though. No smacking the floor, the neighbours under me will get mad."

That was fine by Chihaya. Precision practice was just what she wanted. It required a level of focus it had taken her years to attain, a sublime narrowing of the world to floor and cards and breath and sound. She still didn't know exactly how she felt about the fire, but she knew she didn't want to feel anything more about the fire tonight.

They laid out the cards on the living room floor in solemn silence. It was lucky that Shinobu's family had ensured that she had a spacious apartment at least, even if she refused to become powerful or prominent like her predecessors had been. There was room enough here for both of them, and for their game, and that was a blessing.

True to her word, Chihaya was very careful to be as silent and delicate as possible. As a result, she lost by four cards. It didn't sting like it would have in the past; they had played so many games against each other now that one loss felt small and temporary, something to be avenged in the next game rather than a lasting failure.

Chihaya teared up anyway, more out of a sense of tradition than anything else. Shinobu rolled her eyes and told her to go to bed, her hands gathering up the cards with practiced, thoughtless sweeping motions.

Normally, the tears would have stopped after a minute or two, but this time they kept going. A sob escaped her, and then another, and suddenly she was crying like she hadn't done since middle school. It wasn't about losing the match anymore, she knew, and she hoped Shinobu knew it too, because she had no room for words to explain.

Shinobu finished stowing away the cards and cassette player, then knelt in front of her.

"Why didn't you do this earlier," she muttered, clearly put out, and took Chihaya's face roughly between her hands.

Chihaya stared at her, tears momentarily arrested.

"If you need to cry, go do it in your room," Shinobu said, sounding very reasonable and patient.

Your room, but it wasn't, not really. The tears, instead of subsiding, suddenly hit her like a tsunami, a low but unstoppable flood. "Shinobu-chan," she wailed, "all my Daddy Bear shirts burned up, all my books, my bed, it all burned up, I can't go back—"

Shinobu winced. "Yeah, I know, so cry it out as much as you need to in your room—"

Chihaya threw her arms around Shinobu's neck and sobbed into her shoulder. She felt Shinobu stiffen, and tried to make herself let go, but couldn't do it. It was like she'd lost all strength in her limbs the minute she'd given in and begged for comfort.

A few seconds later, she felt a hesitant pat at her hair, and it warmed her to her bones.

"I don't know how to do this kind of thing," Shinobu said awkwardly, "so—"

"It's okay," Chihaya mumbled, "just let me stay here for a minute."

"Okay," Shinobu said hesitantly, and patted her hair again.

Shinobu-chan really wasn't good at comforting people, not like Kana-chan or Chihaya's mother, but it was enough. More than enough. Chihaya clung to her and let herself drown for a bit.

She really hadn't thought she was that sad about it, but it was such a major change, and one she hadn't had any power over or even expected. It felt like the world had thrown her off the patch of land it had told her was safe to stand on, and she hadn't done anything wrong to deserve it. It hurt.

"Thanks, Shinobu-chan," she sniffled after a minute or two, and pushed herself away, and stood. "I'll go to bed now. Sorry for bothering you." With a straight back and tight fists, she marched herself over to her room and closed the door behind her, and sank down with her back to it. She didn't want to cry anymore. She didn't want to, but it wouldn't stop.

After a couple of long moments, she heard Shinobu's footsteps quietly approach her door, followed by a long silence. "Chihaya," Shinobu said at last, quietly.

Chihaya couldn’t answer. She didn’t have anything to say, she couldn’t set Shinobu’s heart at rest. All she could do was cry, and she didn’t want to make Shinobu any more uncomfortable than she already was. She bit her lip and held her silence.

At last, Shinobu let out a long sigh. She didn't leave, though; there was a muffled thunk like she'd let her forehead rest against the door. "I won't push," she muttered through the thin wood. "I just wanted to make sure you were really all right."

Abruptly, Chihaya felt childish and ungrateful. She stood up, opened the door, and stared at Shinobu's feet and the floor, not trusting herself to meet Shinobu's eyes and hold it together. "Sorry. I'm fine. I'll be fine in a little bit, I mean. I don't want to bother you anymore, so it's okay if you go to sleep. Thanks for worrying about me."

"I wasn't worried," Shinobu said. "You're my guest, I'm just—"

"I know," Chihaya interrupted, "I know, it's fine. Thank you. It's okay." She turned around. "Let's play again tomorrow."

She almost felt rather than heard Shinobu's sigh at her back.

"Fine. Sleep well, and if you get up before me keep it down."

Chihaya nodded, knowing better than to speak another word, and waited until she heard Shinobu turn to leave before shutting the door and wandering over to fall face-first on the guest futon. It smelled like laundry detergent, fake chemical lavender.

When she closed her eyes, she saw black smoke and blue sky. Sleep came eventually.

Her dreams were restless.

*

Shinobu's dreams were restless, too.

She kept surfacing into the hypnopompic state, the hallucinatory shallows above the depths, half-awake but not at all in control of her mind. There was a handful of memories that wouldn't leave her alone tonight, and they kept playing over and over again, warping into surreal strangeness whenever she fell too far asleep and snapping into focus when she resurfaced again.

The brightest among them was the first real queen match she'd played against Chihaya, when Chihaya had come for Shinobu's title with fire in her eyes.

Chihaya had lost, that time, but the last few minutes of the match had been incandescent, transcendent, revelatory. Shinobu had looked across the wide battlefield and seen something more than a girl, something so vast and bright it was almost a deity, the personification of the cards themselves, fighting joyously and with all its strength as if to thank her for her long loyalty and passion towards them.

Over and over again, she saw herself swoop in for the winning card and get there first, just barely, just barely. She saw Chihaya bow her head, saw the brightness on her cheeks when she raised her head and thanked Shinobu for the game through her tears, thanked her again and again even as she cried.

Shinobu was not a person very prone to love. While she did love bits and pieces of her family, in some cool and quietly resentful way, the cards had been her first real passion. She had never loved any friend the way she loved the cards. She had never loved anything at all like that.

For a moment, at the apex of that match, she'd felt for Chihaya what she felt for the cards, not a separate adoration but part of the same deep current. Chihaya and the cards were linked together in her mind in that moment, and had remained so ever since.

Chihaya had won her second challenge, and Shinobu had felt almost wholly unashamed to lose to her. A new sensation, as she was used to apologizing to the cards whenever she failed to save them from the careless, cruel hands of her lesser opponents. Losing to Chihaya had felt like losing to the god of the game itself, and while it did mean that she wasn't strong enough yet, there was no shame for her in being tested and found wanting by something so high, so pure, so exalted.

The feeling had eventually passed, and she had grumped and grieved and resolved to win the crown back next time, but the memory was always there in the back of her mind, ready to ambush her when she least wanted it.

Shinobu dreamed, and woke, and dreamed, and woke, and no matter where her mind ran she could not escape Chihaya.

*

Fire or no fire, it wouldn't do to keep her clients waiting, so Chihaya was back to work the next day. Tutoring wealthy middle school children in their language studies didn't pay the bills very well, but it was enough for now, until she found a job that suited her better.

She liked children. They weren't embarrassed by beautiful things, and it was easy to teach them to find poetry while she taught them the words to draw it with.

They loved her in turn, because she made them feel like their experiences were worth writing poems about.

For a few hours, everything felt blissfully normal. She savoured them.

And then, after leaving, she got on the wrong bus and walked halfway down the five blocks between the closest stop and her apartment before realizing she was walking into the memory of something that wouldn't be there to meet her. She stopped dead, staring down the street towards the space that had once held the first home she'd chosen for herself.

Then she tightened her fists at her sides, took a deliberate deep breath, and turned her back.

Shinobu's apartment was half an hour in the other direction. She spent it rehearsing, going over the route like she was memorizing a spread of cards, trying to talk her mind into choosing it first in spite of her muscle memory.

By the time she arrived, it was nearly dinnertime. Shinobu was cooking, probably; there was a whiff of something food-like on the air, though Chihaya couldn't tell much more than that. Chihaya favoured heavy spices when cooking for herself, but Shinobu seemed to be content as long as her food didn't actively offend her tastebuds, so what she made was generally mild and unremarkable, whatever was quick and easy and relatively nutritious.

Chihaya didn't mind. Somehow Shinobu's cooking had a distinct and comfortingly familiar flavour of its own, and it was just what Chihaya wanted in that moment.

"Can I help?" she asked, after shucking her shoes and stowing her heavy bag of textbooks in the guest room.

Shinobu tilted a look at her over her shoulder, then shrugged. "Not really, I'm almost done. Maybe set the table?"

Chihaya knew where the relevant things were kept, and set about doing as asked without a further word. Shinobu kept glancing at her as if somehow uncomfortable, but said nothing.

When they sat down to dinner, Shinobu was quiet, but Chihaya couldn't seem to stop herself. She told Shinobu about every one of her kids, in considerable detail, lingering with love on their attempts at poetry for her sake. Inexperienced as they were and limited as their vocabularies were, there was a straightforward honesty to their attempts to recontextualize the world in artful ways, and that she truly loved. Shinobu didn't stop her.

After wash-up, she suggested a game, and Shinobu acquiesced with the same quiet indifference she'd shown throughout dinner.

Chihaya didn't know quite what to make of it, but she was desperate enough for a game to forgo asking.

She won by seven cards, a higher margin than she'd managed in two years.

"Is something wrong?" she asked while cleaning up. She hoped it wasn't something she should have understood without being told. Sometimes she still missed those, and had to suffer through the awkwardness and apologies until time soothed the irritation.

Shinobu shook her head. "No. I'm just tired."

Chihaya had no choice but to accept that, though she felt unsatisfied. "Thanks for the game," she said.

All she got from Shinobu was a nod. Feeling faintly uneasy, she retired to the guest room, leaving Shinobu to her own devices.

*

Shinobu was unsettled.

It wasn't that Chihaya had done anything wrong, exactly. She'd been nothing but a model houseguest all day. There was something about it that put Shinobu on her guard, though, and she wasn't exactly sure what it was. Something about the way Chihaya had moved unerringly to the right cupboard when asked to set the table, even though it wasn't her house. Something about the way she never had to look down to avoid the raised lintels of the bedroom and bathroom doorways. Something about the way she moved like she already knew Shinobu's home by heart.

She'd been over quite a few times over the years, it was true, and memorization of the local placement of objects was a skill the playing of karuta seriously tended to amplify a hundredfold, but even though she was always polite and asked permission for anything beyond the obvious little things, her presence and unthinking familiarity with Shinobu's space felt strangely intimate, to the point of being almost intrusive.

At the same time, she had no desire to push Chihaya out.

Again, always, the conflicting feelings when it came to Chihaya.

Though she rarely did it anymore, she worked through the night, taking comfort in the regular muted clicking of her keyboard and the soothing flow of meaningless words. Proofreading them required a large amount of focus, too. By the time the sun came up, she was completely subsumed in the work, moving on cruise control and letting the words and rhythms comfort her.

Chihaya emerged from the guest room an hour or so after sunup, bleary-eyed and dishevelled, wearing another one of Shinobu's shirts, this one patterned in pink and brown Daddy Bear faces. It was too tight, too, and left a narrow swath of pale skin bare between its bottom edge and the baggy grey sweats.

"I have to go to work," she mumbled, "but when I get back will you go shopping with me? I need clothes and things."

"Okay," said Shinobu, so far beyond tired that she couldn't make her eyes rise from the edge of that shirt to meet Chihaya's eyes. All-nighters were always hard on her physically, but she liked the effect they had on her state of mind. Everything seemed so tranquil and comfortably blunted after her mind gave up on processing half the things around her.

She did register Chihaya's smile, at the periphery of her vision.

After the door clicked shut behind Chihaya, Shinobu went to bed and stared at the ribbed patterns of sunlight on her ceiling for an hour before managing to fall asleep.

*

Chihaya worked, and again welcomed the distraction.

On the way home, she got off the bus half a dozen stops early and walked, teaching her feet the way. It was a lovely day, the sky that shade of bright and unsteady blue that belonged to early June. All the trees had grown their leaves out, providing erratic shade for the sidewalk. Every garden was filling up with colour and silk.

She liked this time of year.

Granted, she liked every time of year. She liked the muddy beginnings of spring, the defiant warmth of its winds, the rising skies. She liked the dreamy humid heat of summer, and not only because all the biggest karuta tournaments happened then. She liked the melancholy winding down of autumn, and the contemplative monochrome silence of winter. She liked the strange days in between, when things changed so rapidly that she could go to sleep in one world and wake up in another. She liked the hearts of them, when time seemed to get heavier and slower at the bottom of its pendulum swing to let her feel all the breadth and depth of the season surrounding her.

One day, she thought, she would write poetry of her own. She’d written some in university, of course, for assignments, but she’d only done it because it was asked of her. Some poets found their voices very young, but she knew she wasn’t one of those. She needed time; time to ferment, time to widen her perspective far enough to encompass all the things she wanted to say.

She wondered if Shinobu ever thought about writing poetry, and doubted it. Shinobu loved the poems like they were people; it would be like playing god to make her own. Chihaya decided to ask anyway, if the opportunity came up; she knew Shinobu fairly well, but it was impossible to ever really know everything about someone. Shinobu might surprise her. It wouldn’t be the first time, or the hundredth.

When at last she came to the base of the steps leading up to Shinobu’s apartment, she paused, then sat down halfway up for a few minutes. There wasn’t much of a view, just a quiet street and a few maple trees, but it was a good view for a home. Small, familiar, uncomplicated. She noted the weathering of the yellow markings on the road, the rusting plaques on the telephone poles identifying them for the people who worked on them, the peeling paint on the yellow fence across the road. An older neighbourhood; built after the war, but not long after. Old enough to have memories, not old enough to have history.

She understood why Shinobu had chosen it. She might have chosen the same way, if she’d been in Shinobu’s shoes at the time.

Nothing much happened here. The fitful progression of human lives, those narrow trenches of chaos, rarely spilling over into the streets. The turning of the seasons, green to gold to grey. The slow peeling of old paint.

Comfortable. Comforting in its changelessness. Safe.

As safe as the human world ever got.

Letting out a long breath, Chihaya got up and climbed the rest of the stairs to the door.

*

Chihaya didn't care much about fashion for its own sake, but living with Chitose for most of her life had resulted in some osmosis, Shinobu had noticed.

Shinobu had almost no interest in it at all, beyond merchandise for her favourite characters and the careful ritual of investing in new yukata. She attempted to communicate that, but it didn't stop Chihaya from insisting on modelling every potential new outfit for her before making a decision. Shinobu's actual reaction seemed to have little to do with which items Chihaya eventually deemed worthy of purchase.

The whole thing was tiring and baffling, honestly, but every time she started to ask if she could just go home already, Chihaya would swan out in some new array and Shinobu would shut her mouth and glower instead.

The thing was, it wasn't boring. That was to say, it was absolutely one of the most boring things she'd ever done, but she wasn't bored.

Chihaya's taste in high school had been fairly pedestrian, a bit boyish, functional but not particularly eye-catching unless she was modelling for the Oe business. Her taste now was still on the functional side, but she'd learned some things about colour and cut and everything she put on now made her look like an off-hours supermodel. Never mind that they were only visiting second-hand and discount shops. Never mind that nothing she tried on cost more than a fast-food meal. The way she stood made it all look like it ought to break the bank.

Shinobu didn't know anything about fashion and didn't want to but she was, at the very least, not bored.

By the time evening rolled around, both of their arms were weighed down with bags and Chihaya had herself a rudimentary but serviceable new wardrobe.

"I hope the insurance thing goes though quickly," she said, biting her lip. "I don't have much left now, and I don't get paid for another two weeks."

"You could've just kept borrowing my things," Shinobu pointed out grumpily.

"Too small."

That was true, and a fair point, but also not the point, and she wasn't sure how to communicate that without sounding like she wanted to Chihaya to wear things that were too small for her, or worse yet, Shinobu's things which were too small for her. She settled for an annoyed shake of the shoulders, which was much too vague but the best she could manage on short notice.

"Do you mind if I use the dresser?" Chihaya asked.

"No, that's what it's there for," Shinobu said waspishly, then felt annoyed at herself for snapping when Chihaya was only being courteous. "It's fine, really."

"Okay," said Chihaya with a smile that was still genuine but somehow descending from it, on its way back down to something sadder.

They were silent for a while after coming home. Chihaya put her things away, slowly, and Shinobu left her alone.

She couldn't really imagine what it would be like to lose a whole world. She had done so herself, in essence, when she'd moved out, but she'd wanted to be rid of everything she'd lost then, and didn't miss any of it now. What she really couldn't imagine was losing everything without that wanting, without expecting it all to be gone later, without knowing she’d be happier without it.

Shinobu tried, though. "Empathetic" was not a descriptor that got applied to her, often or ever, but she did her best because this time it was Chihaya, and she wanted to understand.

What if for some reason, someday, she had to relearn the names and stories of half the cards? That seemed as close a comparison as she could find, and it was uncomfortable to think about. The cards were her home, more than her grandmother's house had ever been, and to suddenly find it new and strange would be... hard. Unsettling. Painful. She didn't like the idea, and it made her feel a bit more sympathetic.

She couldn't hear the dresser drawers anymore, but Chihaya hadn't come out. Shrugging, she started the rice for dinner. Chihaya would get hungry eventually.

If she still hadn't come out by the time dinner was ready, Shinobu would decide what to do then.

Empathy was hard, but procrastination was very easy.

*

Chihaya felt strange.

She was happy to have some clothes that fit her, to possess some things of her own again, but somehow buying them felt like admitting that her old life was well and truly gone. She'd thought she'd already accepted that, but as she carefully folded tops and skirts and put them away in Shinobu's spare dresser it all felt new and unreal, like the first few minutes of yesterday morning all over again.

She wanted to play karuta. During the first few minutes, the memorization time, the layout became her whole world. She had no room for anything but where her card was then, and where her friends' cards were, where all the cards she loved best were. Holding them in her head required every ounce of concentration she could summon up, and if she let herself think about anything else they would fly out and she would lose, usually very badly. She hated to lose, so over time she had gotten better about blocking out everything going on in her life outside the game.

She needed that, now, but she couldn't do it without an opponent to put pressure on her.

Shinobu had been in a bad mood all day, so Chihaya was a bit afraid to ask her. She was being so kind, letting Chihaya stay in her spare room, letting her use the dresser and eat all her food. She'd even obliged her with a game the night before. Chihaya couldn't get too greedy, or Shinobu would get annoyed and she'd have to leave and to go stay with her family and navigate all that mess.

All the same, she wanted to ask. She wanted nothing more.

The smell of dinner ghosted under the door. Nothing spectacular, just seasoned rice and mushroom soup, but all of a sudden Chihaya was ravenous. They'd been out all day, after all, walking the stores and streets in the early summer heat, and she'd only had a cafe muffin since breakfast.

"That smells good," she said meekly as she emerged and came around the narrow wall into the galley-style kitchen.

"You must be hungry," Shinobu said.

"I am," Chihaya said, faintly confused. "Should I set the table?"

Shinobu paused for a moment, stirring the soup. "...Sure."

Chihaya did so, then brought the bowls up for filling. Shinobu was generous, she noticed; her portion was bigger, and Shinobu had made enough for seconds if she wanted any. Shinobu might not say much, and what she said might be gruff and harsh, but she really was kind in her own way, Chihaya thought.

It would be bad to keep taking advantage of that. Tomorrow, she decided, she would start looking for a place. It would probably take a while to find one that suited her and fit her budget anyway, so the sooner she started the better.

It was much easier, as an adult, to lose one's grip on time and realize only weeks later how much of it had flown past without note. Chihaya had noticed some time ago, and didn't want to let herself relax and lose weeks while in someone else's care. She could so easily outstay her welcome, and friends have been lost over less than that.

Mind made up, Chihaya straightened her shoulders and set into her dinner.

As they cleaned up, shoulder to shoulder, Shinobu seemed to be mulling something over. Her jaw and brows were set in that particular way that was familiar to Chihaya, the way that meant she'd come to an impasse with herself and was trying to stare her own mind down to break it.

"Is there something wrong?" Chihaya asked eventually, cautiously.

Shinobu gave a one-sided shrug and made a face. "Not really."

"But you're making the face," Chihaya said.

"What? This is just my face," Shinobu protested, scowl deepening.

"Yeah. It's your face, and it's making the face," Chihaya explained patiently.

"Why do I never have any idea what you're talking about," Shinobu muttered, shoving the last of the dishes into their respective cupboard with a little more than necessary force. "It's nothing. Nothing you have to worry about. All right?"

Chihaya drooped. "But if you're worried about something, talking about it is the best way to sort it out," she said, very reasonably in her opinion. "I want to help."

Shinobu let out a long, gritted sigh. "Let's just... let's just play a game instead. How about that."

For a long moment, Chihaya almost thought she might be able to hold out against that temptation and insist on helping Shinobu with her problem. She realized as she was holding her breath in the attempt, though, that Shinobu looked genuinely hopeful, and that was too much.

"Okay," she said, with defeated joy.

*

They laid out the cards and played, and Chihaya had no more time or room to talk. She was distracted, though, and made a slow start against Shinobu's savage focus. By the end, she was back in her groove, but Shinobu hadn't let up at all, so she lost again, by two cards. A respectable margin, but still frustrating, Shinobu could tell.

As they tidily put the stacks back in their box and the silence fell, Shinobu sighed again, a softer sound this time.

"Here's the thing," she said, not meeting Chihaya's eyes. "I got used to living alone, these last few years. I'm not... doing so well with going back to sharing my space with someone else. I didn't -- Stop that, this is why I didn't want to tell you," she snapped, exasperated.

Chihaya's eyes were brimming over with tears. She shuffled a little closer to Shinobu and tried to catch her eyes, but failed, and wrung her hands instead. "I'm sorry," she said, a little frantic. "I really am, I just couldn't think of anywhere else to go. I'm going to start looking for a place tomorrow, I'll cook dinner every day until I find one, I'll compensate you if you--"

"I said stop that," Shinobu said sharply, "and let me finish, you idiot. I didn't want to tell you because it's not your problem. I said you could stay here, I told you to make yourself at home, and I meant it."

"But--"

"No, stop. Just stop. I'll get over it in a little bit, okay, it's not your problem so don't worry about it."

Chihaya stared alternately at her hands and at the side of Shinobu's face. "I'm still going to start looking tomorrow," she said quietly, wiping the tears off with a sleeve. "Thank you so much for taking me in, but I don't want to be a burden, so I'll find somewhere and I'll get out of your hair, okay? Please just give me some time."

Shinobu heaved a third sigh. It was getting to be a habit again. "I said as long as you need, didn't I? How about taking me at my word for once? Have I ever broken it?"

"No, but that doesn't mean you didn't ever wish you could."

That was true enough that Shinobu had to stop and gape for a moment, all her words suddenly draining away through the floor mats. "Well. Yeah. But I don't want to now. You're not a burden or whatever, so just stay and take it easy."

Chihaya fidgeted, drawing in on herself, biting her lip, until Shinobu cocked an eyebrow at her.

"What now?"

"Can I hug you," Chihaya said all in a burst, almost one word. "I know you don't like hugs so if I can't it's okay but I really really--"

Shinobu let out her fourth and hopefully final sigh of the evening and opened her arms. "Just this once, you hear? Because I feel bad for making you cry."

Flinging herself across the space between, Chihaya bowled Shinobu over in something that was more tackle than hug. At the far end of it, Shinobu was flat on the floor and Chihaya was busily trying to hug the greatest possible amount of her, face planted against the side of Shinobu's neck and hands splayed out against her back.

Shinobu hated hugs mostly because of her aunts, who were without exception terrible at them, but always insisted on them when they came to visit. Cautious back-pats and distasteful cheek kisses were not her idea of a good time.

This... wasn't either, exactly. It was much too intimate and Chihaya was heavy and the way her forearms were making Shinobu's spine bend was a little uncomfortable, to name three things. That said, Chihaya's hugs were a world away from the insipid little rituals her aunts had put her through, and Shinobu couldn't pretend she entirely hated them. Not to herself, at least.

"Let me up before my ribs crack," she muttered after a good twenty seconds, not angrily.

"Sorry!" Chihaya snapped back upright with all the supple strength long karuta muscle training sessions had afforded her. "Sorry!"

"It's fine. Anyway, yeah, don't be in any big hurry to find a place. Take your time, find one you like."

"Okay," said Chihaya agreeably, mood much improved. "But... tell me if something bothers you again, okay? Please?"

"If you insist," Shinobu grumbled, fully intending to do nothing of the kind.

Chihaya beamed. "Good. I'm going to bed then, I want to get an early start."

"Suit yourself. I'm going to get some work done."

"Good night, Shinobu-chan," Chihaya said.

Shinobu knew this territory. She relaxed. "Good night, Chihaya."

*

True to her word, Chihaya began the hunt the next morning.

She hadn't been much of a morning person as a teenager, but then, teenagers rarely were; they always needed more sleep than they were getting, as a general rule. As an adult, though, she'd discovered she did have a bit of a morning person inside of herself, to her amazement.

By nine, she'd had her breakfast and gotten all the local newspapers she could find. Arranging them on the floor of the living room, she located the for-rent sections of each and cut them out with Shinobu's kitchen scissors, discarding the useless remnants.

When that was done, she borrowed Shinobu's computer and printed off every likely looking ad she could find online.

Then she started sorting.

The results were much as she'd predicted: unacceptably far away, unacceptably expensive, unacceptably loud, or variations thereof. Many of them were all three. Undeterred, she placed the unacceptables in a pile and made another next to it for those that were not ideal, but could be lived with, at least in the short term.

The phantom third pile, for those that met her frankly unambitious criteria, remained stubbornly empty.

By the time she'd reached the end of the little heap of paper potentiality, there were three candidates left. One of them was located uncomfortably close to a major roadway, but was at least not directly on it, as many of the others had been. Another was a suite in a house that looked promising but felt off somehow, in a way she hadn't pinned down yet but trusted. The last was the one she liked most, a tiny one-bedroom in a low tower for a very reasonable price, but it was a little farther away than the maximum distance she'd decided on, and not all that easily accessible via transit.

All told, she could certainly do worse, as the much larger pile of rejects attested, but that didn't mean she had to be happy about the options as presented.

She drew in a deep, fortifying breath, and let it out in an explosive gust. Then she pulled out her cell phone and started making calls.

By seven o'clock, she had seen two of the three; the roadway apartment and the suspicious suite. The little apartment she’d liked best had already gone by the time she reached the landlord, to her frustration.

The roadway apartment was, as she'd suspected, much too loud to be borne. She liked or at least could tolerate some kinds of sounds -- the chatter and laughter of children, the ponderous barking of large dogs, conversation between friends kept to a reasonable decibel level -- but the pulsing roar of traffic grated on her. She knew within minutes that even with the best earplugs she could find, it would become unbearable in short order. Regretfully, she scratched it off the list.

The suite was, much as the ad for it had been, perfect on the surface, but the feeling of wrongness persisted as she made conversation with the landlord's wife. At last it resolved itself when the landlord himself walked in and his wife shrank in on herself, almost but not quite imperceptibly. Chihaya still wasn't very good at picking up on social cues, and made frequent missteps, but she prided herself on her sense for people. The landlord was not a good one, and she didn't want to live within ten blocks of him.

Excusing herself politely, she returned to Shinobu's flat and sat down in the middle of the living room to ponder.

There would be a new newspaper the next day, and new ads online, but she had somehow had it in her head that she would find a place today.

Never a patient person, Chihaya tried to reconcile herself with the idea of waiting.

Shinobu emerged from her room and looked down at her where she was sitting, at the near-exact center of the floor. "What are you doing?"

Chihaya craned her neck around and up to look at her. "Thinking," she said, with a frown.

"Doesn't suit you," Shinobu said.

Chihaya pouted.

"What about?" Shinobu said, relenting after a moment's stubborn silence.

Holding up the candidates, Chihaya sighed. "I'm having bad luck. This one's gone, this one's too loud, this one... is not good either."

Shinobu rolled her eyes roofwards. "Didn't I tell you to take your time? There'll be others. You'll find a better one, don't expect to find the perfect place right off the bat."

"But--"

"No, stop."

Chihaya gave her a rueful smile. "I'll look again tomorrow, okay?"

"Fine," said Shinobu, "do as you like, I give up. Are you hungry?"

"Yes," Chihaya answered immediately. "Very. I'll make dinner."

"Cool. I haven't eaten yet, either. What are we having?"

Chihaya got up and charged into the kitchen to rifle through the cupboards. Pulling out things here and there, she eventually accumulated enough to make... something, probably, that would pass as edible. "Soup," she announced. "With noodles. And things."

"Works for me," said Shinobu, tilting over to lie on the floor and closing her eyes.

Chihaya didn't know how long she'd stayed up the night before. Later than Shinobu was used to, she'd guess. She was always low-energy and laconic, but she didn't generally just lie down wherever she was to doze. In Chihaya's experience, at least, which might not count for as much as she'd previously assumed it did.

She'd known Shinobu for a long time, and seen her at her most open and alive, during their queen matches, but she couldn't know everything. No person could ever know everything about another, no matter how much time they spent together; that was just a fact. There were vast areas of Shinobu's soul Chihaya suddenly felt sure she'd never even glimpsed.

What was Shinobu like with her family? Chihaya had never seen that; Shinobu had never let her. What was she like with her other friends? Did she have any? Did they play karuta?

A terrible thought occurred to Chihaya then: had she been the first? Surely Shinobu had had other friends in her life, as a child, as an adolescent, as a teenager... but Chihaya had never heard a word out of Shinobu's mouth about any of them. Had they made so little impression as to be hardly worth calling friends? Or had they hurt her enough to deserve purging from the records of her heart?

"Shinobu-chan," she said.

"Mmph," replied Shinobu, from her fetal position.

"Was I your first friend?"

Shinobu sat upright very suddenly, staring at her. "What makes you ask that?"

Chihaya shrugged, suddenly a little self-conscious. "I don't know. I just thought... kind of noticed... if there were others, you never talk about them. I got curious."

"I've had other friends," Shinobu said stiffly.

"Oh," said Chihaya. "Okay. Good."

"I didn't like them, though."

It was Chihaya's turn to stare. "Then how were they your friends?"

"We spent time together. Played and stuff. Grandma brought them, all her friends had grandkids.  They didn't play karuta," she added, answering at least one of Chihaya's questions.

"They don't sound much like friends to me," Chihaya said honestly. "You can be friends with anyone you meet, but you don't always... it's not always. You can spend lots of time with people and not be friends, I think. I've been with some of the other members of the karuta society for years and years, and I like them, and I'm grateful to them, but I don't think we're friends? Friends is something more. Something... better."

Shinobu shifted uncomfortably. "I don't know, I was a kid. Maybe we weren't."

"If... if you weren't," Chihaya continued cautiously, "then...."

"Then yeah," Shinobu interrupted. "It's, uh... it was probably you. You're the first person I actually.... This is embarrassing, stop looking at me like that."

Chihaya couldn't know what her face looked like in the moment, but she could guess. She tried to make it behave, and failed. "I'm sorry," she said, "but I'm also really happy, and I think maybe I should feel bad about that."

"Don't bother," said Shinobu, gruffly but with a high blush on her strong cheekbones. "You always tie yourself in knots over the stupidest things. I don't get it."

"I want to hug you," said Chihaya.

Shinobu glowered. "No. I said it was just that once, didn't I? Besides, I'm starving, please focus on dinner instead."

Chihaya swept a short dramatic bow of acquiescence and turned away, but out of the corner of her eye as she did she caught Shinobu resting her face gently in her hands and scowling in a way that didn't seem very angry at all.

*

The ads the next day were even more dismal, Shinobu could tell by the pained set of Chihaya's shoulders.

Even so, shortly after lunch Chihaya set off for a couple more interviews.

It was equally touching and irritating, her insistence on finding a place and not being a burden and all that. Shinobu regretted ever telling her of her own feelings, though it had been a relief in the moment to be honest about them.

What Chihaya had gotten out of her wasn't the whole story, though, and the incompleteness of her understanding was bothering Shinobu. When she got back, Shinobu though, maybe they could talk about the rest of it. She didn't like talking about her feelings at all, ever, generally speaking, but now that half of them were out it felt wrong to sit on the other half and let Chihaya think she was making more trouble for Shinobu than she was worth.

The fact was, while it was true that Shinobu was unsettled, it was also true that she didn't hate having Chihaya there. It was nice to have someone to share dinner with, and play games with; to have someone there to fill the space in her too-large apartment. Chihaya wasn't a difficult roommate. She was more affectionate than Shinobu really knew what to do with, but that wasn't entirely a bad thing.

All told, Shinobu thought she really might not mind if Chihaya ended up needing to stay for rather longer than she'd initially expected. That thought was unsettling in its own way, but she wasn't as prone to anxiety or circular thinking as she had once been.

If that was how she felt, that was how she felt, and that was all. Weren't they friends, anyway? Wasn't that how people were supposed to feel about their friends?

To her own annoyance, Shinobu felt the blush rising again as last night's discussion replayed itself in her memory.

I'm also really happy, Chihaya said, with that rueful smile Shinobu had apparently memorized in every detail.

Shinobu drew her knees up and planted her face into them, trying to push all the traitorous blood back out of her face.

"Ugh," she said.

Footsteps sounded up the stairway outside, and the door creaked open. Chihaya, back earlier than expected, looking resentful and defeated.

"No luck?" Shinobu asked lightly.

Chihaya shook her head, pouting. "No good. Their grandfather still lives with them and plays the television at top volume all the time, I couldn't stand it."

"Better luck next time," Shinobu said neutrally.

If possible, Chihaya deflated even further. "Yeah. I have to go back to work tomorrow but I'll keep looking, and go to interviews in the evening if I can. Sorry, I was really hoping to find a place today."

Shinobu rolled her eyes. "Apologize one more time and I'll stuff it back down your throat," she said. "There's no rush. I kind of--" The words started to come out, then stuttered to an embarrassed halt halfway up her throat. "Uh."

While she tried to convince them, Chihaya shucked her boots and jacket and flopped down on the floor very close to her, sprawling onto her back and looking up at Shinobu. "You kind of?" she prompted, very gently.

"Kind of," Shinobu tried again, "uh, like having you here? A little. Maybe."

Chihaya stared up at her, frankly startled. "Really?"

That damned blush wouldn't give her any peace. Shinobu scrubbed her hands up and down her cheeks to punish them, but realized too late that would just make them redder. "Don't get a big head about it."

The smile that spread across Chihaya's face then was possibly the worst thing that happened in the days since the fire, in Shinobu's opinion. It spread like sunlight blazing through parted curtains, lighting the whole room up until it was hard to see anything but that brilliance. Then, as quickly as it had come, it faded back to a tolerable level, which was somehow even worse. "But you said before--"

"Yeah, that was true," Shinobu said gruffly, "it's just, what I said just now is true too. It's weird and a little uncomfortable but I don't dislike it."

"Then it's all right if I stay another week, and look for a place next weekend?"

"It's fine," agreed Shinobu, "honestly, stop fretting about it, you're driving me up the wall."

"Okay," said Chihaya, "sorry, thank you, you're the best."

The blush had finally faded, but all the prickly heat of it seemed to have taken up residence in her chest instead, which was not really better. "Don't mention it."

"Okay," said Chihaya, then said "Thank you" again anyways. "Dinner?"

Shinobu risked the smallest of answering smiles. "Yeah. Please."

Chihaya got up and headed for the kitchen, much as she had the night before, and it had the beginnings of a ritual that already felt a little comfortable and warm.

It would be good, she thought, if Chihaya stayed long enough for things to stop feeling new and awkward. Most of what she disliked about the current situation was how badly it was disrupting her routines; she liked to have some idea how each day was going to go, and she liked it when the same things happened at the same times. She made exceptions for matches, because she loved them, but she was always tired afterwards and glad to be home. This was like being at a multi-day competition away from home: temporary rituals were developing, but she still felt out of place and weary.

If Chihaya stayed, eventually she would adjust, and the new routine would start to feel normal. Only then, with all the dust settled, would she able to tell if she liked the new landscape or not.

Conversely, if Chihaya left too early, she’d never know, and that would bother her for years to come. She knew herself well enough to know that much.

*

The pantry was running low.

It had been a week and a half since she’d moved in, and while she often ate out when she was teaching or house-hunting, she’d still taken a toll on Shinobu’s supplies.

Her paycheck was still several days distant, but she had enough left for this. While Shinobu slept off another all-nighter, she hit the local grocery stores and came home laden with bags. She was grateful, again, for all the physical training karuta required of her.

When Shinobu woke up in the mid-afternoon, Chihaya had lunch ready for her, rice balls and sesame spinach salad.

Shinobu’s mumbled thanks made her feel warm inside.

It had only been a week but she could feel thing settling down, settling in. It was dangerous. This arrangement was temporary, shelter during this winter of her life, and she knew it. Shinobu would get tired of sharing her space eventually, and if Chihaya had wasted her time between now and then she would have nowhere to go.

She had to keep looking.

After lunch, Shinobu wandered over to her computer. Chihaya didn’t know what she did for fun, but it seemed to involve scrolling through a lot of text and pictures and snickering on occasion.  Chihaya left her to it; she had a fresh batch of newspapers to plough through with her scissors.

Again, the third pile remained empty, but there was one in the not-ideal-but-possible pile that Chihaya had a good feeling about. It was far away, and suspiciously cheap for its size, but she had a hunch.

She called the owner, and learned to her surprise that she was the first person to express interest in it. She set the appointment up for two hours later, spent forty minutes on her presentation, then let Shinobu know she was going and left.

It was a little off the beaten path, and quite old, but that only meant it would be quiet. Of her three rule-out criteria, the distance was the most flexible. She could endure a long commute, if it was affordable and wasn’t too noisy.

It took her an hour to reach it. She arrived fifteen minutes early, and spent them looking around the neighbourhood. It wasn’t nice, exactly. Many of the houses in the area were somewhat decrepit, and there was very little traffic. It was similar in feel to Shinobu’s neighbourhood, but older and somehow more tired.

Most people would have a hard time spending all their hours there, but she thought she might like it. She could always go elsewhere for excitement; she needed a quiet place to sleep, and this would give her that.

The house itself was freshly painted in pale yellow and green, but she got the sense that it resented its makeover. It was too old and resigned for spring colours. It was surrounded by a wide and rather overgrown yard, with hints of flagstone paths winding around the sides. A thin slope of trees backed it, with a small creek at the bottom. The nearest neighbours were a good thirty yards off on each side, with high fences blocking her view of their properties.

A lonely house, forgotten and neglected.

The owner greeted her warily when she finally went up the front path from the gate to the door. He was elderly and sunken-eyed, and not in a very good mood.

Chihaya did her best to cheer him up, but realized partway through that that wasn’t what he wanted. What he wanted was a tenant for the house, regardless of what concessions he had to make to achieve that.

She understood why, the moment she set foot inside.

It was haunted.

At least, it felt haunted. Chihaya had never met a ghost before, but she’d harboured some secret belief in them since childhood, and had looked in every cobwebbed corner and musty attic for them in the hopes of hearing some beautiful tragic story.

She’d never seen one, and she doubted she’d see one now, but it felt like she ought to. The hallways were long and worn to a shine in the center from decades of footsteps, there were dark little rooms in the corners full of forgotten things, the ceilings were low and the only light what weak and watery sunlight could penetrate the grimy glass of the windows. The wind outside made the walls whistle and moan softly.

She understood now why the price was so low. It would take a person of exceptional emotional fortitude to live here without losing their nerve within a week.

Lucky for her.

“I’ll take it,” she said, beaming at the startled owner.

“Really?” he asked cautiously, then caught himself. “I mean, I’m glad to hear it. I’ll draw up the contract for the first of the month.”

Chihaya frowned. “I can’t move in on the 15th?”

The owner fidgeted. “The attic is still full of my family’s belongings,” he said apologetically, “and I’d like to get some cleaning done before you move in, miss. It hasn’t been lived in for some time, you see... it’s very dusty, the garden is full of weeds, and the water and electricity aren’t hooked up. My daughter insisted I put the listing up, but I didn’t expect anyone to enquire until closer to the end of the month. I’m terribly sorry.”

“Oh,” said Chihaya, a little crestfallen. It was barely a third of the way through the month. She’d have to impose on Shinobu for three more weeks.

Even so, she couldn’t bring herself to say no. She really liked this creaky old house and its haunted rafters and its wild, overgrown yard. It felt, however absurd the thought was, like it liked her.

“Is that not acceptable?” the owner asked anxiously.

Chihaya shook her head, waved her hands reassuringly. “No, no, it’s all right. The insurance payment hasn’t come in yet anyway, so this is probably for the best. If it’s ready early, though, will you let me know? Once I have the payout I’ll be happy to pay the difference.”

The landlord nodded vigorously.

Chihaya grinned at him, reached out to shake his hand.

It was a long way from work, but she felt good about this decision. She could always listen to audiobooks on the way, or read. She’d never been one to get sick from reading in a vehicle. It was a reasonable price to pay for an affordable house she liked this much.

She’d have to do something about the paint job, at some point. The house didn’t like the one it had. Maybe she could enlist her friends to help her sand and stain the shakes instead. That would look nice, and last against the weather, and not be too cheerful for the house's somber personality.

Her head filling with ambitious plans, Chihaya left by the garden gate.

*

Chihaya had apologized profusely on coming home, of course, and Shinobu had accepted them all with aloof grace, but she was secretly pleased.

Three weeks wasn’t much time, but it was enough to answer the question she’d been chewing on.

She wasn’t sure what she’d do if the answer turned out to be “I like my life better when Chihaya lives with me,” but at least she’d know.

Shinobu had enjoyed Chihaya’s wild-armed description of the winning candidate. Honestly, it sounded like the sort of place she’d have chosen for herself, had it been available back when she was house-hunting. She didn’t believe in ghosts, but she liked the idea of them, and the atmosphere. Also, people wouldn’t be inclined to come visit often, or to walk in as they pleased. All told, a haunted house would be an excellent place to live, and she silently applauded Chihaya’s taste.

They were fundamentally different people, but in a few areas they agreed whole-heartedly: Daddy Bear and Snowmaru were cute, ghosts were cool, and everyone who didn’t care about karuta was boring.

She had work to do, but she allowed an hour in the late evening to eat dinner with Chihaya, who was at last entirely herself again, having kept her promise and found a new home.

Chihaya wasn’t a genius cook, but dinner tonight was quite elaborate, and contained quite a number of Shinobu’s favourite dishes. She hadn’t asked for them; Chihaya had remembered, even though the last time she’d ordered one of them while out to dinner had been almost half a year ago.

She caught herself blushing again, which was irritating. Chihaya’s memory was necessarily excellent; it wasn’t all that strange that she’d remembered, Shinobu tried to tell herself. At the same time, though, she knew Chihaya’s memory for anything that didn’t relate to karuta was generally abysmal. So either Chihaya paid the same attention to Shinobu as she did to karuta, or she saw Shinobu as part of karuta, and both of those options made her very self-conscious.

When she finished, she thanked Chihaya awkwardly and offered to do the dishes, which felt very strange considering they were her dishes and it was her home. Chihaya, of course, wouldn’t hear of it. She seemed to have adopted cooking and cleaning as her compensation to Shinobu for letting her stay. Shinobu hadn’t asked for it and wouldn’t have minded if she’d done nothing of the kind, but she understood Chihaya’s need for fairness and didn’t object.

While Chihaya dealt with the aftermath, she turned to her work, but found it hard to focus with Chihaya humming tunelessly in the background.

Giving up on that, she wandered around her favoured corners of the internet until Chihaya was finished, then challenged her to a match.

It was one of the best they’d had in quite some time. Neither of them was distracted, neither of them was struggling with some emotional turmoil. They were both quite comfortable and rested.

Shinobu won, but only by a hair, an even thinner one than the one by which she’d won their first queen match. Chihaya’s hand met hers on the way down for the last card. It went fluttering away into the air outside the square. Chihaya’s hand was still touching hers, motionless.

“Thank you for the game,” Chihaya said, and for once she didn’t look ready to cry. She was smiling, very slightly.

In one quick movement, she caught Shinobu’s hand and twined their fingers together over the empty field.

Shinobu stared at the sight, unsure of what to make of it. She forgot to reply, which wasn’t uncommon.

“Thank you for everything,” Chihaya continued. “You didn’t have to let me stay here. You didn’t have to let me eat all your food and pester you for matches at all hours. You could have turned me away, and we would still have been friends, so thanks.”

Shinobu bit her lip.

“I already told you you’re welcome,” she said, trying for waspish but ending up somewhere south of that. “You don’t have to keep thanking me, or apologizing, or whatever else.”

Chihaya tightened her grip. Her hand was a few degrees warmer than Shinobu’s, a little damper.

“I do have to,” she said, ducking her head so her long red-gold hair fell around her face. “I do have to, because if I take it for granted it’ll be harder to leave.”

Shinobu stared at the top of her head. “Oh.”

Carefully, without looking at her, Chihaya began to gather up the cards, letting go of Shinobu’s hand so she’d have both of her own to turn to the task. Shinobu felt the absence of that damp heat like a cavern in previously solid stone, felt the air move in the spaces Chihaya had left empty within and around her.

*

Unlike Shinobu, Chihaya wasn’t set on having predictable routines, but she liked feeling that she understood her context. She liked knowing where the pitfalls and sweet spots were, what she could get away with and what she couldn’t.

Over the next two weeks, she learned the lay of Shinobu’s land in much greater detail than she’d ever had the opportunity for before. It wasn’t that she learned anything entirely new, or came upon any undiscovered territories; she just became much more familiar with the ones she already knew, until she felt she could walk them blindfolded and never trip.

Some areas were still walled off, of course. Chihaya knew not to ask about Shinobu’s family, or about her childhood, and not to ask about her feelings directly unless absolutely necessary.

Outside of those, she learned small things. Shinobu often cooked the same thing several nights in a row when left to her own devices, or a huge pot of one thing that she would then eat for days, but also that she enjoyed having variety when Chihaya provided it. Shinobu preferred to sleep in a tight defensive knot of limbs and blankets, in direct contrast to Chihaya’s loose sprawl, as she discovered when she peered in one morning to see if Shinobu might want to share breakfast. She’d known Shinobu liked sweet things, but hadn’t expected the freezer to be 80% full of ice cream, with everything else squeezed resentfully into one inconvenient corner. In retrospect, she should have.

Towards the end, she could almost sense it when Shinobu was waking up, and took to starting breakfast then instead of letting it go cold waiting. Shinobu had many ritualistic habits, but how long she slept was not one of them; it varied wildly from ‘not at all’ to ‘twelve hours at a stretch’ with no discernible pattern.

She learned that Shinobu would tolerate physical affection to a certain extent, and even seem pleased by it now and again, but would become a porcupine in an instant if Chihaya pushed it even one degree too far. Doing her hair while she sat and focused on her work, sitting close enough to touch shoulders while watching TV; these were acceptable. Hugs were almost always unwelcome, and tickling absolutely forbidden.

Chihaya stopped apologizing at every turn. She also stopped saying thank you, except when something new made it necessary.

Chihaya learned, and adapted, and fit her life into the open spaces of Shinobu’s.

She got comfortable.

The landlord called her a week before the end of the month to gruffly inform her than her house was ready for occupation.

She thanked him and hung up, then dropped the phone into her cross-legged lap and sank her chin into one hand to think. This was what she’d wanted, and she was certainly looking forward to moving into her little haunted house. Her things wouldn’t take long to pack. She could be gone by the evening if she wanted.

Chihaya chewed her lip and tried to sit on the mess inside her chest to calm it down. It didn’t work very well.

“What’s with the sour face?” Shinobu asked, emerging from the washroom smelling like water lilies and towelling her damp hair. She looked healthy and as close to cheerful as she ever got, somehow more vital than she had a few weeks ago when Chihaya had first arrived.

She couldn’t and wouldn’t credit herself for that, but it didn’t help.

“The landlord called,” she said. “I can move in now. I’m trying to decide.”

Shinobu froze, briefly, then sat down opposite her with a stubborn, defensive set to her chin. “What are the options?” she asked neutrally.

“Go now, go tomorrow morning, wait until the end of the month to save the week’s rent,” Chihaya said.

The tension in Shinobu’s jaw wound up further. “Don’t go tonight,” she said, finally. “There’s hardly any daylight left, and there’s no rush. Either of the other two is fine. Whatever you want.”

Two weeks ago, Chihaya would have been baffled and a little hurt by Shinobu’s chilly irritation, but she understood it better now. She still didn’t really know what to do, though, except maybe apologize again, and that would only make Shinobu angry, so she swallowed it.

She drew her knees up. She knew what she ought to do. If she were still an impetuous teenager, she might have done what she wanted and ignored all the reasons she shouldn’t, but she wasn’t. She was an adult, and she had grown accordingly. Not enough, by most standards, but there had been progress. She was trying.

“I’ll go tomorrow,” she mumbled. “In the afternoon.”

“Fine,” Shinobu said, looking stormy anyway.

“You should come visit when I’m settled in,” Chihaya said. “Meet the ghosts.”

“Yeah, sure,” Shinobu said.

Chihaya opened her mouth, but couldn’t find anything else to say. Shinobu was shutting her out harder than she ever had, and she knew Shinobu wouldn’t tell her why if she asked. Not right now.

“I’ll make dinner,” she said instead, and got up to do that.

Shinobu said nothing but perfunctory thanks throughout the entire meal, then got up and sat down at her computer to work while Chihaya did the dishes. She had her big headphones on, the ones that didn’t let any noise fainter than a fire alarm in. Usually she wore earbuds that allowed her to be aware of her surroundings. The message was very clear, and Chihaya respected it, though she was unhappy about it.

She slept fitfully, and could hear Shinobu tossing and turning through the wall.

In the morning, she packed her things, thanked Shinobu and apologized one more time, loaded up the taxi and left.

It all felt anticlimactic.

Her house was waiting for her when she got there, grumpy but welcoming. She deposited her things in the middle of the living room and went upstairs to put sheets on the bed as her first order of business. It had been properly aired out, and the mattress wasn’t new but it was clean and comfortably firm. She paused for a minute to listen, and even now at midday it was blessedly quiet.

She’d sleep well here, she thought, and tried to feel as excited about that and about the rest of it as she had when she’d first set foot inside it. This was hers. A new home. A new start. Something to be happy about.

Chihaya sat down on the edge of the bed and wondered if she was going to cry.

*

Shinobu had her answer.

Chihaya had only been gone a few hours, but Shinobu felt the emptiness of her apartment keenly. How had she ever felt big enough to fill this space on her own?

For an hour or so in the late afternoon she paced restlessly. Then she tried to clean Chihaya’s vacated room, but Chihaya had already done that, leaving nothing for her to do. There was no trace that Chihaya had even been there. Frustrated, Shinobu paced some more, slowly wearing the tatami thin and shiny.

Then she decided to make dinner a little earlier than usual to distract herself, but lost focus halfway through and ended up staring at nothing, consumed by her own thoughts, until the dish blackened and burst into acrid flames. She put it out without damage to anything but her pride, suppressing a deep and persistent urge to scream with frustration.

She felt off-balanced, oversensitive, upset; much as she had when Chihaya had first arrived, but far worse this time. She hadn’t been comfortable with Chihaya coming, but she was outright unhappy about Chihaya leaving, just as she’d known she would be but hadn’t wanted to admit.

She had meant to say something, that last evening, but couldn’t find any acceptable words to describe what she wanted without leaving herself too vulnerable, and so she’d said nothing, and now Chihaya was gone and her apartment was empty and her dinner was charcoal and her kitchen smelled like fire and she was angry at everything but at herself most of all.

She didn't mind being alone, but she hated to be lonely, and now she was lonely again when she hadn't been before and it was her own fault.

At least she still had the cards.

When she had done everything she could for the kitchen, she knelt down in the living room, shuffled the cards and lay them out one at a time like a tarot spread. She hadn't done this in a long time, not since her last loss, but it had always been a comfort in times when she wasn't sure how to feel or what to do.

It was almost like a conversation. She told them something, or asked them a question, and put a card down to read their input on the situation. They were always compassionate, always truthful, if not always merciful.

They were not merciful today. The first card she drew was #8. A laugh managed to squeeze its way out of her strictured throat.

My lowly hut is
Southeast from the capital.
Thus I choose to live.
And the home I made myself
Men have named a "Mount of Gloom."

“Cheeky,” she murmured, touching it gently before turning over the next.

They only got more strident from that point in, until she felt fair well under attack. #28 followed #47, then #96, #71, #30, #66, and finally #36. Grey poems, about loneliness and endings and the fragility of hope. She put the deck down suddenly. Not ungently – she would never be less than gentle with the cards – but abrupt and defensive.

The message was unambiguous, but she didn’t want to hear it. She hadn’t wanted them to tell her to take the risk. She had wanted them to comfort in her cowardice, to assure her that she would be all right eventually even if she did nothing.

The cards, like any true friend, knew when to ease her and when to push, and she was being pushed.

She slept on the living room floor, curled around their box, and dreamed of withering leaves and a wandering moon.

*

Chihaya woke early the next day, restless and unrefreshed despite the quiet and comfort.

She was unpacked within an hour, and immediately wished she’d dragged it out longer. There was lots of cleaning still to be done, but that required less focus, leaving her mind free to wander. She really didn’t want it to wander right now.

So, abandoning that, she decided to go out shopping for furnishings. All the major necessities were present already, but none of the personal touches that would make it feel more like home to her. Nothing too extravagant – the insurance payout wasn’t large and wouldn’t cover a real proper spree – but a handful of things to brighten up the corners would be good for her, she thought.

She stepped into the shower. The water was somewhat fitful and couldn’t always maintain its temperature, but it never got intolerably cold, so she bore with it. She’d talk to the landlord about replacing the water heater in a few months, when it got closer to winter. For now it was fine, and she didn’t want to rock the boat so soon after moving in, even if he did apparently view her tenancy almost like a personal favour to him.

Washed and dried and tidily dressed, with a distracting goal ahead of her, she started to feel better.

It was a grey day outside. Monsoon season was in full swing, the humidity oppressive. It wasn’t raining right this minute, though, so she decided to risk it.

Having nowhere in particular to be on a Sunday morning, she took her time wandering through the shops downtown, making note of things she liked enough to possibly come back for. She had lunch at a little cafe that made fat fluffy pastries, and spent some time reading before paying her bill and setting out again.

She almost managed to keep her mind off of what was bothering her. Almost.

It caught up to her on the way home, though, when she was sitting on the bus with several delicate bags on her lap and no hands free to hold a book or write or even fidget with.

She loved her house, but she hadn’t wanted to leave Shinobu’s apartment. It was a hard thing to admit, because there wasn’t much she could have done about it, and not much she could do now. She had left, and she couldn’t go back, not for anything more than an ordinary visit. Not that she’d want to give up her lovely new house to do it, either.

She had made the right decision, but she wasn’t happy about it, and that painful dissatisfaction wouldn’t go away until she let it run its course. She made up her mind to have herself a good cry when she got home. Self-indulgent, maybe, but it would help, and perhaps then she’d be able to get on with her life.

She got off the bus a couple of stops early and walked the rest of the way, learning the route, just as she’d done for her old apartment, and just as she’d done for Shinobu’s. She’d been at her old apartment much longer, and had lost it in a much more catastrophic way, but oddly she felt just as uprooted and off-balance now as she had then.

Settling into the new place would ease it, she hoped, and she was well on her way to that, but it bothered her. She had only been with Shinobu for a few weeks. Surely she couldn’t have gotten that comfortable?

But she had, she knew. She had tried not to let herself, but it had been so easy. Shinobu had made room for her, let her in, even as she shut Chihaya out in other ways to protect herself. Dinner for two, a game of cards, the steady clacking of the expensive mechanical keyboard, the smell of the sheets, the familiar weave of the floor under her bare feet; she’d soaked it all in, memorized it, cherished it. She’d made a home, even knowing she would have to leave it, because she couldn’t stop herself.

As she approached her block, it began to rain, so she hitched up her bags and broke into an awkward jog, making the door before she got too miserably soaked. Setting her bags down at the edge of the foyer, she headed for the washroom to towel off and get changed.

She started dinner, then set about distributing her new purchases. A few calligraphic poems to hang on the walls, a sturdy but charming tea set, a Snowmaru figurine for the top of the TV set. Things she’d lost in the fire, replaced but somehow unsettling in their newness.

Turning the heat down on dinner, she left it to simmer calmly for a while and tried to think of something to do. The volume of the empty space within the house seemed to swell and bear down on her the moment she ran out of things to focus on. It was such a big house, and so old, and so empty. It would take some time to fill up its corners with her presence, and until then she knew she would feel small and a little lost like this. There wasn’t much to be done about it.

It would help to have someone else there with her, and she knew who she wanted, but Shinobu had been upset with her when she left, so she sat on the impulse to pick up the phone. Not yet. Another day or two, to let Shinobu cool down and reorder herself. She knew Shinobu well now. She knew what Shinobu needed.

Chihaya just... needed something too, but couldn't bring herself to put her own need first at Shinobu's expense. Especially since she knew it would turn out the worse for her in the long run if she did.

Maybe she would invite her other friends over earlier than she’d intended to, just to fill the space. Kana-chan first, and Sumire with her if they were together. Then the boys. She’d polish up the living room and lay down fresh tatami and play some friendly matches and think about nothing. It would be good. Not what she wanted, but close to what she needed.

The doorbell rang.

The noise was sudden and jarring in the comfortably mellow space of her kitchen, and it sounded like an answered prayer. She stumbled on the way, forgetting about the little rise between the kitchen and the hall. The landlord? A neighbour? She wasn’t expecting any visitors, but she was desperately glad at the prospect of one right now.

She opened the door onto a mystery in the shape of a girl.

*

Shinobu stood transfixed by the soft light pouring out of the doorway, the rich smell of dinner. A familiar one. Chihaya had made that soup for her, on one of the very first nights. She could almost taste it again.

It was pouring rain out, and she’d missed her stop and had to walk back, so she was soaking wet and annoyed and out of sorts even without all the unrelated emotional turmoil roiling in her guts. She didn’t know why she was here or what she was going to say or what kind of answer she expected. She was just here. Drenched, miserable, desperate and here.

“Shinobu-chan?” Chihaya said incredulously. “What are you— In this rain—“

Shinobu thought of the hollow shadows gathering in the corners of her apartment, the polished stripe she’d paced into the floor, the dreams, all those painful things the cards had told her. She thought of dinner, the muddled ashes she’d scraped out of the pan. Such a small conflagration, no damage done, but the stench had permeated the entire space. The thought of drawing even one more acrid breath had become unbearable. So she’d left. Run away. Run towards.

“There was a fire,” she said, and it wasn’t a lie.

Chihaya stepped back, making room for her, and Shinobu followed without thought. Nature abhors a vacuum.

“You’re not even wearing a raincoat,” Chihaya said, not reproachful but dismayed. She expertly peeled off Shinobu’s outer layers, until she stood steaming faintly in the foyer wearing only her pants and a thin lilac t-shirt. “Hang on, I’ll get you a towel—”

Shinobu reached out, still not thinking, still not allowing herself to have any real thoughts because she couldn’t trust herself to have good ones. With dim, expanding horror, she realized she was probably going to cry, if she wasn’t crying already. She had Chihaya’s sleeve pinched between her pale, shivering fingers, and had no idea what to do next.

She didn't know what to do, but she knew what she wanted Chihaya to do, now, though she hadn't until that exact moment.

She wanted Chihaya to drag her in and drown her like she always did. She wanted Chihaya to hug her, because it wasn't that she hated it when Chihaya hugged her, it was that it was too much for her too handle, and right now she wanted too much. She had never kissed anyone before, or let anyone kiss her, but right now she wanted Chihaya to do something that would show Shinobu she wasn't alone in this, and that would do better than most things.

Chihaya wouldn't, not without knowing it was welcome. Maybe not even then.

Shinobu gathered her courage and did what she could: she stumbled forward and put her arms around Chihaya, buried her flushed face in the crook of Chihaya's stunned shoulder, and held on for dear life.

A moment later, halfway through her next breath, Chihaya squeezed it out of her, hugging her back so ferociously Shinobu felt half-assimilated. Too much, just as she'd wanted.

“I wanted to call you,” Chihaya mumbled tearily, “but I didn’t know if I should, I wanted to tell you but I was scared I’d make it worse, what do you mean there was a fire?”

“I burnt dinner,” Shinobu muttered, adding “really badly,” when she felt Chihaya’s confusion. “There were flames, the smoke alarm went off and everything.”

“But you’re okay?”

“No,” said Shinobu, which was not at all what she’d meant to say, but somehow it felt like she’d pulled her finger from the dike and released the torrent. “I’m not. I don’t actually know what I’m feeling, honestly, but I hate it -- all of it -- and you’re right at the middle of it all, and I didn’t know what to do, so I came here. But now I’m here and I still don’t know.” She felt breathless, like she’d been thrown high into the air and suddenly realized how far away the ground was and how rapidly it was approaching. “I wasn’t happy when you came, but I was, and I wasn’t happy you were there, but I was, and I was happy you left but I wasn’t, and I know I’m not making any sense but I just—”

“Shinobu-chan,” Chihaya interrupted, somehow clutching her even tighter, “I missed you too.”

“I didn’t—" Shinobu started to protest, wheezing weakly through the pressure on her ribs, but it was a lie and she didn’t want it said enough to really put effort into it. “I mean.”

Chihaya drew away to look her in the face, and Shinobu was relieved but also regretful. Always, always the conflict.

“I wanted to tell you that I didn’t want to go,” Chihaya said, wiping messily at her eyes. “I wanted to tell you how happy I was that you’d taken me in, and how happy I was to be there with you, and how much I wanted to stay, but I couldn’t, I was too scared. I was going to leave you alone for a few days until I felt... better... but here you are. I know you hate it when I cry but I can’t help it. I’m too happy. I’m so happy.”

There was a golden light expanding in Shinobu’s chest, filling the pale room beneath her ribs, and she could hardly breathe around it. It hurt. She wished she hadn’t come, but couldn’t imagine still being back in that ashen apartment breathing stagnant and acrid air, either. The world had such immediacy right now; nothing outside the foyer was real, nothing before or after this was real, the only concrete things in the world were this monsoon moment and the tears on Chihaya’s face and the painful thunder of her own heart.

“I think,” Shinobu said hesitantly, “I might be in love with you.”

If she wasn't going to be courageous now, then when? If she wasn't going to tell the truth now, then when? It was so important. She was so afraid, she wanted so badly to turn tail and run the moment the last of the words left her mouth, but she didn't. She stayed.

Chihaya had had confessions from people she loved before, Shinobu knew. Arata and Mashima both. Chihaya had loved the two of them for most of her life, in her own way, but not in the same way as they had loved her. So she had told them no and let their hearts be broken rather than lie to them. Shinobu knew Chihaya wouldn't lie to her, either, and she dreaded the approaching No more than she had dreaded any of the other many inevitable things in her life.

Chihaya said nothing. Chihaya stared at Shinobu like she'd never seen her before, wide-eyed and confused, and said nothing.

“Can I kiss you,” Shinobu said helplessly. Not really a question, because she already knew the answer, or thought she did. Just arranging the last of her cards on the mat.

“Okay,” said Chihaya unsteadily.

It was Shinobu's turn to stare.

“I don't really know if I like kissing,” Chihaya said, crossing her arms defensively but not backing up. “I didn't like it when Taichi did it, and I didn't like it when Arata did it, but I didn't like it when they said... what you said either, and when you said it it was different. So maybe this will be different, too.”

The sense of hyperreality deepened. Now nothing was real except Chihaya's hesitant face and her own suddenly dry mouth. “If you don't like it, just say so,” Shinobu said, taking a cautious step closer. “Okay?”

“Okay,” said Chihaya, biting her lip and letting her stare fall to Shinobu's lips, anticipating.

Shinobu kissed her. Not for long, and not very well, but long enough and well enough to say what she meant. Then she drew back, blushing furiously, unable to meet Chihaya's eyes for even a moment despite all her summoned courage. “Well,” she said, again failing to make it a real question because she felt sure she knew the answer.

Again, she was wrong.

“I don't know,” said Chihaya. “It was... different. Can I kiss you again?”

“Okay,” said Shinobu, and closed her eyes.

This time, without the pressure of being the one acting, she was able to let it wash over her. It was too much. Far too much. Exactly enough. Chihaya was cautious and warm and her hands were creeping up Shinobu's forearms. Shinobu never wanted to be anywhere else ever again.

Chihaya held it a hair longer than Shinobu had, but dared no more than Shinobu had. When she drew back, she looked troubled.

“I think maybe,” she said, “I don't like kissing much.”

Shinobu was almost crushed, for a moment, but Chihaya wasn't done.

“I don't like kissing much,” she repeated, looking a little less lost, a little brighter, “but I do like you. Maybe enough to kiss you sometimes just because you like it. I don't know. I don't understand any of this, Shinobu-chan, but I don't want you to live alone all the way over there while I live alone all the way over here. If I ask you to stay, would you?”

Shinobu thought about it, with what little emotional wherewithal she had left. She thought about abandoning her ashen apartment, its empty spaces, its unloved walls and corners. She thought about sharing the space she stood in with Chihaya and the house's ghosts, about long games in the middle of the night with no one in earshot to get upset at the racket, about hearing Chihaya walking around before she got up every morning for the foreseeable future. She thought about eating dinner with Chihaya every night and washing dishes shoulder to shoulder and buying things that belonged to both of them.

She thought about Chihaya kissing her, just every now and then when the stars aligned, and thought about learning to live with too much.

They would misunderstand each other, and step on each other's toes, and fight sometimes. They would make each other cry, and not always know how to fix it. They would make a mess of things. She could imagine it as vividly as she could remember all the messes they had already made. It could go so badly.

“Ask me,” she said hoarsely.

Chihaya asked.

Shinobu answered.

And just like that, they were home.

*

#36

In the summer night
The evening still seems present,
But the dawn is here.
To what region of the clouds
Has the wandering moon come home?

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