Archive of Our Own

“Hey there, you’re the new doctor right?”

Mafuyu turns around, a cardboard box full of silverware in her arms, at the sound of the voice. Facing her is an old couple, both smiling amicably at her. She readjusts her grip on the box before answering.

“Ah, yes, that would be me. My name is Mafuyu Asahina. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

She bows as best as she can without dropping forks and knives on her feet, but the woman of the pair simply laughs in answer.

“Oh, you Tokyoites, always so stern and polite! There’s no need for that here, Asahina-san.”

Mafuyu nods along. If she doesn’t have to bow everytime she talks to someone, then it’s all the better.

The man takes a few steps towards her, and she notices him holding a basket.

“Here,” he says, “this is a gift from the both of us. Vegetables, right from our garden! We hope you’ll feel right at home in our little village.”

There’s nothing she’d like less than being back home right now, but she keeps it to herself. She’s about to thank the man for his hospitality, when the woman suddenly buts in.

“Oh, Kazuhito, are you blind?” She scolds her husband. “The poor girl already has her arms full! Asahina-san, do you need any help?”

“I’ll be fine,” Mafuyu quickly answers. She wasn’t planning on interacting with anyone this early, or even at all, and she doubts two old people would be much help with heavy-lifting. The woman seems disappointed at her words, though, so she adds, “but if you could take the basket inside while I put this away, I would be very grateful. Thank you, by the way. I wasn’t expecting to be welcomed this kindly. I appreciate it.”

She smiles, praying that it doesn’t seem as forced as it feels. The couple seems to buy it, thankfully, and the woman follows her inside while continuing to bicker with her husband.

“Were you expecting her to carry all these vegetables on top of this box? I simply can’t believe you.”

“Geez, Eiko, cut me some slack would you? I just got excited and wanted to give them to her immediately!”

Mafuyu does her best to tune them out. She isn’t used to such animated talk, having spent so long avoiding her peers at work as much as humanly possible and focusing only on her duties. She isn’t sure she likes it, the noise, but…

Anything is better than the cold and silent atmosphere she spent her whole life in, so she’ll deal with it.

The two end up staying to help her unpack anyways, despite her insistence that she can do it on her own. Although, maybe they were right to do so, as Mafuyu suddenly realized that there was no way she could have gotten all her things sorted so quickly on her own. As thanks, she offers to help in their garden if they ever need it, to which the man, Kazuhito, begins to rant excitedly about his vegetables.

When they finally leave, Mafuyu feels completely drained. And yet, for some reason, she can’t help but smile.

She’d forgotten she was able to do so involuntarily.

///

Days go by, and Mafuyu slowly comes to know more and more people.

She isn’t sure exactly how word traveled so fast that the old couple, who she discovered are her neighbors, knew of her arrival before she even got out of her car, but it seems the whole town was on the same page as them. For the first week after she moved into the village, people have been greeting her on the street, sometimes offering a gift, always with kind words and gratefulness for her work. It’s oddly flattering, and Mafuyu can’t say she dislikes being appreciated for simply doing her job.

She does her best to remember the names of everyone who comes up to her, eventually simply writing them in a notebook, so she can be sure to properly greet them should they come to her for medical help.

Once she finds herself feeling comfortable enough to focus on something other than simply familiarizing herself with her new surroundings, she decides to go to the bookshop she’s been told about by its owner, a woman in her fifties by the name of Uehara. Reading is the only pastime Mafuyu has ever allowed herself to indulge in, during her commute or breaks at work. It’s one of the few things she doesn’t intend to let go of.

When she enters, Uehara is nowhere to be seen. The place is empty, save for a young man who she deduces to be around her age, standing at the counter and looking particularly bored. He perks up when he hears her enter, but sighs in disappointment when he notices she’s not whoever he must have been waiting for. Mafuyu nods her head at him and quickly heads to the back of the shop.

She sighs and looks around, then groans. The back of the shop seems to be reserved for romance novels, which she has no interest in. She wants to go back in search of the mystery section, but can’t bring herself to.

If there’s one category of people Mafuyu has never been able to stand, it’s people her own age. Growing up, she always felt alienated from them, no matter how much some of them seemed to appreciate her. The guy on the other side of the shop is the first one she has had to face since she moved here, the village being mostly populated by retired people this time of year, when no tourists or family are visiting. It’s making her strangely anxious.

Trying to calm down, she begins to look at the books. As expected, none of them seem like her kind of story. She’s never cared much for romance, in or out of fiction. She’d much prefer immersing herself in a well-crafted universe, with rich world building and complex characters, than follow some clumsy protagonist stumble her way into a relationship with an uninteresting male lead.

She scoffs as she picks one up and looks at the cover, which features a man and a woman kissing passionately, then puts it back. She looks at some others, discovering patterns in the way all the covers are made, until she can’t distinguish any of the books by anything but their titles.

She’s picking up another one, when she hears a male voice from right behind her.

“Do you need help finding something?”

It takes every ounce of self control in her body to stop her from jumping back in surprise, and when she turns around, the man she was avoiding is standing there, waiting expectantly for her answer.

“I, uh…” she hesitates, starting to panic a bit. There’s no reason why talking to this stranger should be so terrifying, when she can perfectly converse with any other person in the village if prompted. She doesn’t want him to help her, she just wants to get a book to read for the next few days and leave. Oh, wait. “I-I’m fine, actually. Just got what I needed here.”

She waves the book around awkwardly. The guy stares back blankly. Then, he squints at her, and suddenly gasps.

“Wait… you’re that new doctor everyone’s been going on and on about, aren’t you?”

“Um.” Mafuyu isn’t sure how to react. “Yes. Mafuyu Asahina. Nice to meet you,” she tells him stiffly.

“Oh.” The guy looks strangely embarrassed. “I’m really sorry, I must have seemed like such an asshole, not introducing myself when you came in. I’m Akito Shinonome.”

He holds out his hand, and Mafuyu shakes it, willing her hands not to tremble as she does so.

“I was waiting for Uehara-san to come by,” Shinonome tells her as he walks back to his spot behind the counter. ‘'You know her? She’s the owner.”

Mafuyu nods and follows him until they are face to face, with only the counter separating them. She focuses her stare on a shelf behind Shinonome’s head as he keeps talking.

“She told me she was going to bring me a bunch of books to put on the shelves. Most of the villagers are napping in the afternoon, so the shop is kinda dead, and I was looking forward to talking to her. So sorry if I seemed cold when I noticed you weren’t her. I was so disappointed that I didn’t even realize you were a new face, haha.”

Shinonome rubs the back of his neck with his hand, looking uncomfortable. Mafuyu hums in acknowledgment, and slides the book towards him without a word. She’s still looking behind him.

“Oh, sorry.” He takes the book and checks the price, and Mafuyu has to dig around in her purse for her wallet. It seems Shinonome can’t stand silence, because he takes the opportunity to start talking again.

“So… what brought you here, exactly? It’s not every day a doctor from Tokyo moves in the middle of nowhere. You got relatives here?”

Mafuyu's heart stops for a second, and she feels it drop at the bottom of her stomach.

It’s such an innocent question. Not anything you wouldn’t expect someone to be curious about, too. Mafuyu was just hoping no one would ever bother to ask her. She swallows, and forces herself to look Shinonome in the eye. She doesn’t see anything there aside from mild interest in knowing her story. He’s just making conversation, unaware of how deep the question cuts Mafuyu.

“I… I’m not sure,” she finally brings herself to say.

“Huh?”

“I don’t know why I’m here.” She tightens her fists. “I just needed a fresh start somewhere, I guess. Something else to do.”

That’s as much as she’s going to be able to say, and she’s glad when Shinonome doesn’t pry. Instead, he prepares her change after she finally gets the bills she needs, and hands it to her with her book.

“Well, there’s really nothing to do here,” he says. Mafuyu simply nods, putting her wallet back in her purse. “I mean, unless you’re trying to make sure people never come to bother you again, hah. I guarantee no one will come looking for you here of all places.”

He gives her a wry smile, and Mafuyu wonders if there’s more to his words than he’s letting on. She thinks for a second, before replying.

“That’s good. I don’t really like people.”

Shinonome stares for a short second, taken aback, before nodding in what she assumes is understanding.

“Then this is the perfect place for you.”

///

It’s only once she’s back home with her purchase in hand that she realizes she just bought a romance novel. She groans, makes herself some tea and sits down on her sofa.

She might as well read it, now that it’s in her hands.

///

Quickly, she starts putting a routine in place for herself. She wakes up, reads for a bit, heads out to have lunch at one of the handful of restaurants the town has to offer, swings by the bookshop to see what new books are available, goes to help Eiko and Kazuhito with their garden or anything else they could need, and then goes back home. The only interruptions in this daily routine are the occasional calls from villagers in need of medical care, causing her to switch to her doctor persona and head to their houses to get to the bottom of the problem. Most people would call this existence boring and uneventful.

For Mafuyu, it’s a deliverance.

The first thing to disturb her newfound peace happens about a month after her arrival. Shinonome is on the phone when she enters the bookshop that day.

She ignores it at first, as she generally tends to ignore Shinonome, and heads to the new releases. One of her favorite authors published a new novel recently, and she wants to know if it’s in stock yet. The one downside to living so far away from the city is how long things take to get here sometimes.

She gets distracted though, as the sound of Shinonome’s voice grows in volume. Despite herself, she ends up listening.

“... I already told you, I’m not coming back for the summer. I- Are you not listening? I’m not. If you want to see me so bad then come down here, but I’m not making the trip to Tokyo just so Dad can shit on me the whole time I’m there!”

Okay, family issues. Mafuyu immediately decides she doesn’t want to know anything more about this, and forces herself to get back to her original plan: find that new novel. It has to be somewhere around here, she already asked Shinonome about it the week prior, and he usually gets Uehara to order things clients are looking for.

“... Mom, please, just don’t, okay?”

The cover is mostly in dark blue, Mafuyu remembers, so she starts looking for the color among the displayed books. White, white, more white, black, black with some white. Book covers look very sad nowadays. She’s reminded of her first visit to the shop, and it’s almost amusing enough to think about all the ridiculous romance novel covers she saw that day to distract her from the conversation happening in the background. Almost.

“What do you mean “what about Ena”? We both know she won’t come home either! And I can understand why!”

Her vision starts to swim and she realizes she’s been staring, unblinking, at one book in particular. She shakes it off and keeps looking. The display is small, so some of the releases end up hidden in the back. Maybe the novel is there.

“Okay, well maybe you should have thought about that before! Don’t fucking call to ask me to come see you and Dad again, alright?”

She’s digging through the books, but she’s not even looking at them anymore. She can hear herself breathe, and it feels like her heart is gonna beat out of her chest. Her head hurts a bit.

“Asahina, your book is right here.”

She feels herself jump a bit at the sudden shift in Shinonome’s tone, directed at her. She turns around and sees him holding the book she’s been looking for. Ah, she thinks. He put it aside for her.

She doesn’t comment on Shinonome’s call just now, and ignores the way he squints his eyes as if he’s fighting back tears. She just walks to the counter, money in her hand, ready to exchange it for the book.

Shinonome takes the money and gives it to her, then looks at her apologetically. “I’m really sorry you had to hear that. I’m not supposed to leave the shop unattended, but I couldn’t ignore the call either.”

Mafuyu would have ignored it, but she doesn’t say that. Just nods, and turns around to leave, but stops when Shinonome speaks again.

“I was surprised when you requested this novel. The author isn’t exactly known to write the stuff you usually like.”

Mafuyu remains silent, thinking. It’s true that she usually buys long, complex mystery novels when she comes to the bookshop. By comparison, the romance novel she’s holding in her hand is probably half as long and far less complicated to follow.

“I like the way the author writes the characters.” She admits. It’s the sequel to the book she accidentally bought a month earlier. As it turns out, not all romance is as vapid and superficial as she has led herself to believe, and she quickly became a fan of that particular author’s style.

Shinonome nods. “Yeah, I read some of their stuff. Pretty good, for a romance.”

Mafuyu frowns a bit. For some reason, she’d assumed Shinonome wasn’t the type to read anything, except for maybe manga. Maybe she shouldn’t have assumed so fast, once again.

Someone else enters the shop before she can reply, and she takes the opportunity to leave while Shinonome is busy listening to their rambling.

///

Sometimes, Mafuyu wonders if anyone in Tokyo remembers her fondly.

She doesn’t think anyone would. After all, she wasn’t friends with anyone there, and all of her interactions at work remained strictly professional.

She doesn’t even begin to think about her family.

She knows from that phone call that Shinonome also has a family in Tokyo, a family that likes him enough to ask him to come visit. According to him, his mom calls him at least once a week to ask how he’s doing.

Mafuyu’s phone remains silent.

///

She’s halfway through reading the climax of the latest book in a mystery series she’s been following with mild interest when there’s a knock at her door. She carefully places a bookmark between the pages and gets up to answer it.

It’s Shinonome, who looks like he doesn’t know what he’s even doing here. Mafuyu simply stares, waiting.

“Um…” He clears his throat with difficulty. “Uehara-san said I had a fever and shouldn’t be working today, and told me to come see you instead?”

Mafuyu opens the door a little wider, signaling to Shinonome that he should come in.

///

As it turns out, Shinonome’s fever is high, and he’s apparently been ignoring it since the previous morning. Mafuyu suspects he’s caught the flu, and when she tells him as much, he simply frowns at her.

“I can’t just stay home, Uehara-san needs me to help out at the bookshop. Besides, I feel better today than I did yesterday, so that means I’m getting better, right?”

He looks at her hopefully, but Mafuyu just gives him a blank, unimpressed look.

“Uehara-san can take care of things for a few days. It’s not like there’s that many clients coming in everyday. Also, if you go back to work in this state, you might get her sick too. You wouldn’t want that, would you?”

Shinonome goes back to frowning, and slumps back on the sofa she had him lay on, defeated.

He’s already asleep by the time Mafuyu is done putting away her things, and she decides not to wake him up.

///

Shinonome’s phone is ringing.

Mafuyu is unsure of what she should do about it. It doesn’t seem to be bothering his slumber, at the very least. In the end, his fever really did get the better of him.

She eventually decides that she should at least check to make sure it’s not Uehara-san or someone else equally important. Maybe his mother?

When she looks, there’s only a simple name. Toya, it reads. She has no idea who it could possibly be, as there’s no one with that name in the village. Not knowing what else to do, she picks up at the very last ring, just in case.

“Akito?”

The voice on the phone is male, like the name indicated. It sounds fairly young, probably around her and Shinonome’s age. She concludes that this is most likely a friend of his.

“Sorry, he’s asleep right now. I can take a message for him, if you want.”

There’s a pause from the young man. Mafuyu thinks she can hear him take a sharp breath at her voice.

“A-ah…” he eventually says, stumbling upon his words. “I didn’t mean to interrupt anything. I can just call later, it’s fine.”

“Alright,” Mafuyu replies, and she’s about to end the call there, happy to not have to continue talking to this stranger, when he speaks up again.

“Um, excuse me for asking this, but who exactly are you?”

There’s tension in “Toya”’s voice, like he’s expecting Mafuyu to be some sort of kidnapper about to ask him for a ransom. She isn’t exactly sure what to make of it, really.

“I’m a doctor. Shinonome had a fever, and he fell asleep on my couch after I examined him.”

She hears Toya sighing in relief, but wonders exactly what is relieving about finding out your friend is sick. Was he really imagining something worse than that?

“I see,” he says, sounding more relaxed now. “Thank you for taking care of him. I’ll call later when I have the time and he feels better, but tell him Toya said hi, okay?”

“I will.”

Toya hangs up, and that is that.

///

“You got a call while you were asleep.”

Mafuyu says it in passing, while handing Shinonome a bowl of soup. It's evening now, Shinonome having slept the whole day. There’s no point kicking him out when it’s this late already.

“Really? Who was it?” Shinonome’s voice sounds rough from coughing too much and having woken up only thirty minutes ago. He accepts the soup gratefully, and starts blowing on it to cool it down.

“Someone named Toya. Is he-”

Mafuyu doesn’t have time to ask if Toya is a friend of his before she hears his spoonful of soup clatter on the ground. Turning to look at him, she finds him staring incredulously at her, as if what she just said made no sense.

“Toya called?!” he almost yells, clearly agitated. “What the hell did he want?”

“I don’t know. He said he’d call back later to talk to you. He asked me to say hi on his behalf, though.”

“Hi?!” Shinonome chokes, and puts down his bowl on the small table in front of the couch before he inevitably spills its contents. “That fucker!”

Mafuyu calmly eats her soup while Shinonome begins to furiously rant.

“He thinks he can just randomly call me now? After ignoring me for who knows how long?! Seriously, what the fuck is up with that?”

Mafuyu doesn’t recall seeing Shinonome this upset, even that one time she heard him on the phone with his mother. This Toya guy must be a pretty big deal to him.

She lets him vent loudly for a minute, not really listening, until she eventually gets tired of it.

“You should settle down,” she tells him. “It won’t do you any good to get all angry when you’re already in such poor health. Also, your soup is probably getting cold.”

She pointedly takes a spoonful from her own bowl, making direct, unflinching eye contact as she does so. Shinonome makes a disgruntled sound, but sits back down on the sofa and resumes eating his food.

Mafuyu has been told her stares can be very scary. Well, told is an exaggeration. She just figured it out the third time a child she was trying to comfort before a blood test burst into tears instead.

She remembers her mother brushing it off the one time she mentioned being upset at this discovery.

"Some children can be so immature. You never cried even once during a physical. That’s because we raised you not to be afraid of such silly things."

By that point, Mafuyu knew better than to disagree with her mom.

She distinctly remembers being terrified of needles as a child.

“Asahina?”

“Huh?”

Mafuyu realizes she’s been drifting off into her own thoughts and completely missed what Shinonome just told her.

“I’m sorry,” she swallows with some difficulty. “I got distracted. What did you just say?”

Shinonome eyes her suspiciously, clearly curious about what had her so unfocused. He doesn’t push, and Mafuyu is thankful for it.

“I was saying,” he repeats, putting his empty bowl on the coffee table, “that I should probably go home. I’ve already imposed on you for way too long.”

Mafuyu makes a face. “You didn’t impose. It’s my job to take care of sick people.”

“But-”

“Also,” she interrupts him before he can answer, “you’re not going anywhere. It’s late, and someone with a fever shouldn’t be walking around in the dark like this.”

“Wait,” Shinonome begins protesting, “you want me to sleep in your house?”

“Yes?” Mafuyu’s frown remains on her face. “I could take you home, but I’m a bit tired. It’s just easier this way. I have a guest room, so it’s no trouble at all.”

Shinonome still looks unconvinced, but he doesn’t fight her, probably too tired from his fever coupled with yelling so loudly. He sits back down, and goes back to eating his soup, contemplative.

"I'm sorry," he eventually says, staring down at his meal.

Mafuyu hums in acknowledgement.

"I just… this is gonna sound super lame," he sighs. "I haven't heard from this guy since high school."

"Is that so?" Mafuyu raises an eyebrow.

"Yeah… He and I, we used to do everything together. We just clicked, you know?"

Mafuyu doesn't know. She still nods.

"And one day he says we're done, and he never speaks to me again. I tried everything, waiting in front of his class, sending him texts… But he just ignored me every single time, until we graduated, and he left to some fancy college."

Shinonome's voice starts to waver a bit, under the weight of many emotions Mafuyu fails to identify. It's probably not something he tells people often, she assumes. But the fever, the exhaustion, perhaps the fact that she's the closest thing he probably has to a friend his age in this village, must be what's making him spill everything out.

"I miss him."

It sounds more like Shinonome's talking to himself than to her at this point.

"I'm sure you do." She was never good at offering comfort, probably because she never received any.

There's a moment of silence, Mafuyu getting up to put their dishes in the sink while Shinonome lies back down on the sofa, staring at the ceiling. She wonders if he's trying not to cry. When she comes back to the living room, he hasn't moved an inch, so she picks her book up again and continues reading like she was doing before Shinonome came by.

///

"Do you think I should call him back?"

Mafuyu stops drinking her coffee so she can look at Shinonome.

In the end, he fell asleep on the couch again, and Mafuyu simply left him there. When she woke up this morning and went downstairs to check on him, he was still sleeping. The sound of the coffee machine is what woke him up.

She swallows, and puts her cup down, pondering over what to say. If it were her, she'd probably pretend Toya had never reached out to her and ignore him. It's the only way she's learned to deal with things that bother her, after all. But… Shinonome is different, she can tell. He doesn't seem the type to flee.

Then again, he's here in this town, away from his family, just like her. Maybe they're not so different in that regard.

"Do you want to?" She ends up asking instead of answering.

Shinonome looks conflicted.

"I don't know." He frowns. "I just… I have no idea what to do now that he's the one reaching out, after all this time."

Mafuyu nods, not sure if there's anything else she should do.

They spend the rest of breakfast in silence, both lost in thought. Eventually, Shinonome speaks up again, a strange look on his face.

"Hey, Asahina?"

"Hm?"

Mafuyu stares, waiting for him to continue. He looks a bit uncomfortable, and she has to remind herself, once again, that she just looks scary when she does that.

"Did you find it? What you were looking for when you came here."

Mafuyu freezes. She's brought back to the day they first met, when he'd asked her that question.

What brought you here exactly?

"I…"

Her throat feels tight. Her brain is suddenly filled with memories.

Her mother, her classmates, her colleagues, her mother, her teachers, K, Amia, Enanan, her mother, her mother, her mother-

"No. I haven't," she forces out.

There's a mixture of sadness and frustration on Shinonome's face. He mostly looks exhausted, though.

"Yeah," he agrees. "Me neither."

It takes Mafuyu a moment to realize that the sob that suddenly fills the room is coming from her. It's Shinonome's shocked expression that alerts her to it.

"Jesus, fuck, I'm sorry," he frantically tells her. "I shouldn't have asked, shit-"

Mafuyu feels tears running down her face as her body shakes with every sob. She starts biting the inside of her cheeks, digging her fingernails in her palms, anything she can do to just make it stop. She's become a master at hiding things like this from years of practice, when she started to understand that as long as her mother didn't know how she felt, she wouldn't have to suffer her judgement.

Just keep it all inside. Just keep it all inside. Keep it inside, Mafuyu.

"Asahina!"

She's brought back to reality, Shinonome's face right in front of her. He looks downright panicked.

"Hey, stay with me alright?" His words are a bit shaky. "Let's count to three, okay? After me. One?"

Mafuyu swallows and notices she's been hyperventilating this whole time. Her throat hurts horribly.

"O-" a sob interrupts her, making Shinonome flinch. "One…"

"Good! That's… that's great Asahina, you're doing great." Shinonome tries his best to reassure her. "Okay. Two?"

"Two." Mafuyu feels herself calming down a bit, focusing on Shinonome's scared but encouraging face.

"Three."

"T-Three." She starts sniffling and Shinonome scrambles for anything she can use as a tissue, eventually settling on some paper towels near the sink.

Mafuyu means to thank him but all that comes out is a weak wail, so she just buries her nose in one of the towels and wipes her face with the rest afterwards.

Neither of them speak. Mafuyu's trembling breaths echo in the kitchen.

When she finally feels capable of speaking without bursting into tears, she raises her voice barely above a whisper.

"I'm sorry…"

"You have nothing to apologize for!" Shinonome immediately tells her. "I'm the one who should be saying sorry. This whole time I've just been imposing on you and talking about my own issues without any regards for how you felt… I'm so sorry."

Mafuyu shakes her head.

"It's okay. I don't mind listening to you." Her voice feels incredibly rough, and it hurts to talk, but it feels like if she doesn't do it right now, she'll never have the opportunity again. "I'm just so tired of everything."

Shinonome lowers his gaze.

"I didn't come here looking for anything," she continues. "I was just running away from my life. I felt trapped and I didn't know where to go, so I ended up here. That's all. I have nothing else to say for myself."

She almost starts crying again, but Shinonome interrupts it.

"But why? What was so terrible that you had to abandon everything and live in the middle of nowhere?"

What about you? she wants to retort, but doesn't. Shinonome has already bared himself to her enough these past few hours. It's her turn.

"It felt like I wasn't living for myself." She takes a deep breath. "Everything up until now… my childhood, my education, my work… It's all my m-mother."

She stumbles on the word and feels ashamed. She's in her twenties, miles away from that woman, and still, despite everything, she can't bring herself to talk about her without feeling scared out of her mind.

Shinonome looks deep in thought at her words.

"Your mother, huh." He smiles sadly. "You know, Toya was a bit like you."

"Huh?" Mafuyu blinks at him, dumbfounded. Shinonome simply sighs.

"His dad was all about classical music, training him mercilessly to become a great pianist. Toya hated that."

"I-I see."

"He had panic attacks sometimes, too. That's why I knew how to help you calm down."

Mafuyu nods. She suddenly feels a bit jealous. She wishes she'd had someone to help her calm down like Shinonome did for Toya back when she was still a teenager.

"Shinonome. Thank you for being here for me," she hears herself say. "It probably didn't mean much to you, but I don't think I remember anyone ever being this kind to me before."

She bows her head slightly, out of habit. Shinonome just stares.

"Jesus, that's sad." He looks a bit embarrassed, which makes her smile. Underneath his standoffish attitude, Shinonome is kind of awkward when it comes to feelings, Mafuyu has noticed.

"Anyways," he says, clearly trying to change the subject away from any compliments towards him. "What are you going to do now? Are you just going to keep doing the same thing you've been doing since you've moved here?"

"... Yeah. Probably." Mafuyu bites her lips. "I mean, there's nothing else I can do, is there? Being a doctor… it's what I'm best at, even though I don't like it that much. It's sad, really… It's like there's no role that is right for me in this world. So I just have to settle for what's been picked out for me."

"That's complete bullshit," Akito replies. "What's the point of running away from your mom and the path she layed out for you if you're just gonna keep doing the same thing anyways? Life isn't some sort of play where the director picks everyone's roles. You pick it for yourself."

"I…"

"Just… you're so smart, Asahina. You could do anything you wanted, if you put your mind to it."

"You think so?" Mafuyu looks at him and only sees naked honesty in his features.

"I do." He smiles at her, and she can't help but smile back, even though it's a bit wobbly and her eyes are still puffy from crying.

She's heard so many people telling her that in her life, but never once did they mean it. All they saw in her was potential for a doctor, a lawyer, or any kind of high paying job. Not passion, not dreams. But when Shinonome, who by now she's convinced is suffering just as much as her, deep inside, tells her that she can do anything…

She completely, wholeheartedly believes it.