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The first thing Yoruko noticed was that she had an ahoge on her head.
“...” She brought up her glasses and rubbed her eyes, but it didn’t change anything.
Looking at a reflection of herself in the beach’s crystal clear waters, Yoruko was definitely sporting a brown ahoge in her hair.
Undoing it was impossible; it bounced and swerved away with every attempt holding even the slightest bit of hair-related malice. Oddly enough, the few times Yoruko was just curious as to how it felt, the weird, soft piece of hair allowed itself to be touched.
“It really just feels like another part of my hair.” Yoruko said to herself, playing with the rest of her hair to assure that there wasn’t anything else amiss. “I wonder why she was so obsessed with them.”
That surprise ahoge was far from the most pressing matter right now, though. Yoruko hadn’t booked an evening vacation to a beach— lord knows anywhere tropical was the last place she’d want to be to calm her nerves.
Yet, the palm trees gently shaking in the wind, the faint smell of sea salt and coconut, the moon on the water’s surface sparkling like diamonds. It was definitely an island. One that she had no idea how she got onto, and one that felt eerily similar to the island known as Utsuroshima.
The hosting island of the Killing School Trip.
An intense despair flashed through Yoruko’s body, and had she not been used to thinking situations like these through, she might have broken down right there. Instead, she caught herself.
Breathe in, breathe out. Let her breaths stay in time with the constant, calming sound of waves until the sharp panic was taken away.
“Okay, let’s… think things through.” Yoruko closed her eyes; ironically, picturing her office was doing much more for relaxation over a beach. “Mikado was definitely dealt with. It’s not even worth playing devil’s advocate for that. Even if the Neo World Program could be accessed again, there’s no way that Rei or Minako would let that happen… same goes for that cop, probably. And I still have my memories, and I look how I should. Yeah. There’s no way I’m back there.”
Once the worst case scenario had been ruled out, Yoruko breathed out in relief. “Does that mean that this is the real world? If that’s true, how did I get here?”
She finally got the spirit to inspect her surroundings more thoroughly, and before long, Yoruko spotted a beach home not too far away.
With no other clues, Yoruko pulled herself together.
“Only one way to find out.”
Despite looking like a decently sized building, the mahogany home was much smaller on the inside then it should’ve been.
The front door led straight into a quaint little bedroom. There was nothing special about it, but that’s exactly what made it special. Yoruko was far more used to the alternatives at both extremes.
The overly extravagant and grandiose. Utsuroshima was filled with those. A grand cruise that housed everything from exciting casinos to beautiful ballrooms and everything in between, touring all sorts of different exotic locations. Delicious food prepared by a chef with mathematical perfection. Rooms that felt bigger than a house and filled with the brim with items from their area of expertise for their respective Ultimate talent.
All clearly to distract from the fact that they were the victims of a sadistic, mentally-grueling murder game. In retrospect, Yoruko realized it never did.
The utterly dull and sterile. The real world was filled with those. Walks through the pseudo-military hallways of the Kisaragi foundation, lined with cold steel and harsh lights. Thoughts on whether the screaming, struggling couple in the corner of her eyes were being apprehended because they bombed a building or because they stole a loaf of bread to feed their families seven years ago and whether the fact that she no longer had the energy to argue on their behalf like she once had meant that she was a bad person or not.
Safe returns after work to her empty home and unkempt bed that only served to make her remember how lonely she was in a world where the only people who could truly understand her were a woman going through her own traumatic loss, a psychotic cop, an amoral broker who was partly responsible for that murderous game and a girl who’s entire worthless existence was being a nuisance.
Years ago, just one of those events might have had her pacing around for hours, but nowadays she was already using most of her energy just to get through the day.
Yoruko, who was so used to those two extremes, found this basic bedroom wonderfully pleasant.
Warm mahogany walls with soft lights. Vases containing some floral decorations.. A couple of shelves, all lined with a bunch of random items and products and other such things that probably hadn’t been used in months. A mirror, a desk, a carpet. Finally, a large made-up bed with a brand-new mattress.
This sort of normality felt like it didn’t belong. It was as though it had been frozen and preserved as a relic from another, more peaceful time. It made Yoruko smile bitterly.
“I feel like I’d be committing a crime if I disturbed this scene. But if I want to figure out where I am, I should start investigating..” Yoruko said. Her hand relaxed off the door behind her, letting it close.
“I’m not Sora, but investigating something small like this isn’t hard at all.”
The door closed shut.
The room became an enclosed space.
And, without a warning, Yoruko felt someone pull at her ahoge.
“Definitely did a good job on the softness. Shape and pullability, too. Flexibility needs some work, though—”
Yoruko’s eyes widened, and she swore her heart stopped. Her body abruptly jolted away, moving seconds before her brain could muster so much as a single logical thought. Disbelief, shock, relief, rage, grief, joy; with the sound of just one voice, Yoruko’s brain was scrambled beyond belief with an avalanche of emotion.
“Oh. It’s sensitive, isn’t it? Sorry. I just can’t help grabbing something so grabbable.”
With intense bated breath, Yoruko forced herself to turn and face the source of the voice.
And Sora was right in front of her.
Alive and well.
One of her small, infectious, uniquely-Sora smiles crept onto those familiar lips. “Yoruko. It’s been a while.”
“...” Silence took the room.. Yoruko’s mouth opened and closed, unable to form words. Eventually, she couldn’t bear looking at Sora. Her head dipped downwards, the bangs of her brown hair blocking her eyes.
“This… isn’t real.” Yoruko muttered.
“Hmm. Sort of.” Sora answered, like it was the simplest answer in the world.
“Yuki… has your body now, doesn’t he?”
“Yeah. Everything regarding that process went smoothly.”
Yoruko began to tremble. Her voice, once a whisper, was climbing louder. “You don’t have a body… y-you were meant to… you did stay behind in the Neo World Program to save us!”
Sora’s smile receded. “I did.”
“I asked… I asked so many times how long it’d take to get you out! E-Every day, I went to the Kisaragi Foundation to pester them about it! That cop… he said it was unneeded… if it wasn’t for Rei, I wouldn’t even know if… but even when they started, Rei said it might take years at best…! I thought I might never see you again…! There’s… there’s no way you could be here…!” Tears began to fall onto the carpet.
“...” Sora said nothing.
“There’s no way you could be here in front of me…” Eventually, though, nothing could stop Yoruko’s crying. Tears streamed down her face, barely able to keep her eyes open enough to see a blurry figure of Sora. “I d-don’t know what to do…”
A tumultuous whirlwind of messy emotion wreaked havoc on Yoruko's heart and mind.
She was only briefly saved from that storm by an intimate embrace.
“It’s not a lie.” Sora hugged the woman as tightly as she could. “I’m right here.”
Yoruko wanted to believe her, wanted to just believe in this warmth, but she desperately shook her head. “No, you aren’t! There’s no way you're actually here!”
Sora’s hug relaxed a bit, voice dropping to a whisper. “But I am here. Right in front of you.”
“No, you aren’t!” Yoruko’s voice cracked as her face went red with burning-hot anger. “I’m tired of being lied to! I’m tired of being deceived! All these damn tricks and manipulation and traps and whatever the hell else, I’m tired of it all! This is just some impersonator, or some drug, or some virtual hologram— whatever it is, I’m not getting tricked!”
Yoruko mustered the strength to raise her head, tearful enraged eyes glaring into Sora’s blank ones. “Sora’s gone! I know that! You don’t have the right to take her face and try to trick me, you bitch! Go away!” She tried shoving Sora away, but all strength had left her arms. “Go away! Go away! GO AWAAAAAAAY! ”
But that shout gave Yoruko the energy to fully push Sora away, the girl stumbling backwards and against one of the shelves. Yoruko heaved in and out, the knuckles of her fist turning a ghostly white from how hard she was gripping them.
Sora paused for a moment, her expression nearly unreadable. “Yoruko. I’m sorry, but I can’t listen to you.”
“W-What… what are you talking about!?”
“‘Go away’... that means I’d have to leave you, right? I don’t want to.” Sora said bluntly.
“Huh…?” Some of Yoruko’s anger wavered.
“I don’t want to leave you.” Repeating her words, Sora began to walk over to Yoruko. Each step was casual, unwilling to be weighed down by the tense gravity of the situation. “Whether this is real or fake, I’d never want to leave you. That’s not deception, that’s just the truth.”
Yoruko’s breathing accelerated, the red tinting her face now stemming just as much from embarrassment than anger. “B-But… How can I believe you? How do you expect me to believe that I’m not being deceived!?”
“Shouldn’t it be simple? We promised to each other.” Now face-to-face with Yoruko, Sora smiled. “That we’d see each other again one day. That we’d live the best lives we can. Never leaving you— that’s the best way to accomplish both, isn’t it?’
“…”
Those words.
The final, desperate, promising words they had told each other before the Neo World Program collapsed and they were separated.
It wouldn’t be impossible for some sort of incredible machine to learn that memory. Hell, there were other people in that crumbling digital room who overheard them.
But only one other person knew how much that promise really meant. No hallucination, program or impersonation could replicate her.
“S-S…” Unable to handle the rush of euphoria, Yoruko’s hands flew to her face in poor attempts to keep in her sniffling. “ Sora…! It’s you! You’re here…! You’re really… you’re really here…! I’m so happy…”
Before her own eyes could glass up, Sora gently slipped her hands under Yoruko’s, cupping her face and sharing their warmth. The tears in Yoruko’s lashes that once blurred the sight of Sora now made it sparkle like a beautiful starlit night.
“Yoruko.” Sora’s voice rang with a shudder, her own face becoming red. “I’m also really happy. It’s hard to remember being happier, to be honest.”
Wiping away her tears as best as she could, Yoruko smiled right back at the girl… or at least, that was the intention. Turns out, Sora’s face was close. Like, really close. Like, only a couple of centimeters away close. Yoruko could practically feel each hot breath. The fact that Yoruko was a bit taller added to the embarrassment. “S-Sora…!? Aren’t you a bit close…!?”
Sora’s response was to lean in even closer, until their bodies were pressed up against each other. Their lips were just a hair’s breadth away from each other. “When I said really happy, I meant really happy. So much that I have to express it somehow.”
Yoruko tried to back away, only to find that she was backed up against the wall. No way to get away from Sora’s advances. “S-Somehow…? Well, I wouldn’t know what that would mean, obviously…”
Their noses touched. Sora kept pushing forward, “I want to feel you, Yoruko. That’s what I meant.”
Yoruko turned away from Sora’s entracing gaze, but if her sky-rocketing heart rate was any indication, it wasn’t doing that much good. She could close her eyes all she wanted, but she couldn’t shut her ears to the soft sound of Sora’s voice, or shut her sensitive hands from feeling Sora’s soft skin, or shut her brain off from going on overdrive. “T-That’s… I mean, that’s…”
Her final, most decisive move. Sora moved to Yoruko’s ears, whispering with such a sultry voice that Yoruko nearly lost all strength in her legs. “ Can I?”
Yoruko’s face went as red as a tomato, and her voice failed her entirely. After failed attempts at speaking that came out as nothing but squeaks, all Yoruko could do was weakly nod.
Sora let out a low, all-too-confident chuckle. She took Yoruko’s wrists and pulled them away from her face, a finger tilting her head back into facing her. Yoruko swore that the moment they made direct eye contact, an electric shock ran through her spine.
Closer. Closer. Sora closed the gap between them in eternity-long seconds, until the tops of their lips were touching each other. Yoruko felt herself beginning to shut down, stumbling and stammering every word she tried to say.
But, soon, Yoruko just braced her heart and pushed out her lips just a little bit.
…
Grab.
Poke, poke.
Stroke, stroke, stroke.
What Yoruko felt definitely wasn’t anything on her lips.
No, Sora’s hands had slipped up and began to, for a lack of a better word, stroke her ahoge up and down.
“...”
“Mmm. This is nice. It was supposed to bob around when you get intense, but this is fine too. It’s really soft. Even if I pull it, it’s like I’m touching the softest fur ever.” With the intimacy of the situation completely ignored by Sora, she looked happy just going on and on about Yoruko’s hair.
“...”
“Next time, I’ll make it a little bit bigger. Oh, or maybe it grows and shrinks depending on the situation?”
“... Y-Y—”
“Maybe I can try the side-ahoge next time, too. So many choices, so many—”
“ Y-You big idiot!”
Yoruko had gotten redder and redder with each passing second. Whether out of anger or embarrassment, she didn’t have the mindset to figure it out. Really, her thoughts had effectively taken the back seat.
That’s the only way that Yoruko would suddenly take the initiative and spring forward to kiss Sora on the lips.
“M-Mmhm!” Even Yoruko seemed surprised by her own sudden smooch, and her mind was currently running a mile a minute. The softness of Sora’s lips, the sheer hotness of the inside of her mouth, how it felt like her spit was some aphrodisiac tailor-made to get Yoruko excited. It was too much, and she was set about pulling away.
Except, she wasn’t allowed to. Once Sora had recovered from her own shock, she wrapped her arms around Yoruko’s waist, preventing her from moving even the slightest bit.
“ Mm-mm-mm.” Sora lovingly ran a finger down Yoruko’s back, the hand eventually wrapping back to subtly touch her chest. She had no intention of ending their first kiss so quickly. Pushing her tongue into Yoruko’s mouth, Sora sloppily pushed and swapped spit with Yoruko like she was an addict, strings of saliva falling out the corners of their mouth. Not at all ready for this assault, Yoruko’s throat may as well have been Sora’s playground.
A full minute passed, and Sora finally eased up. Pulling away, she licked her lips of all the saliva that was staining there. “Hmm. Your kiss is sweeter than I thought it’d be.”
Brain still trying to process the fact that she just made out with Sora, the steam coming out to the top of Yoruko’s head might as well have been visible. “H-Haah… Haaaah… Kiss…? W-We… kissed…?”
Sora smiled teasingly, but genuinely. It was the same smile that Yoruko had fallen in love with. “I’m glad. Your reaction was as nice as I hoped it'd be.”
Just then, the white of Sora’s hair began to glow brightly. The flash encompassed the room in mere seconds, obscuring everything in pure light.
Yet, despite that powerful light swallowing everything around her, Yoruko felt as though she could see Sora perfectly.
“Mmnm…”
The first thing Yoruko noticed was that she slept with her glasses on again.
They felt glued to her face, but after years with these frames, Yoruko was confident that they were fine.
With her glasses on as soon as she woke up, though, Yoruko could see one thing clearly.
She was back in her room, lying on her bed.
“So, it was a dream.” Yoruko said to herself bitterly. Despite that, there was a small smile on her face. “Well, I’m okay with that. I needed a reminder that I can’t just fall apart just because Sora’s gone for a while. There’s other people that need my help… including myself.”
Slapping her own cheeks to get herself together, Yoruko put on a determined face. “Alright! It’s been a while, but I’ll open counseling again. I’ll try and see Rei more often, for one. Let’s see… if I open five more slots over the next month, I’ll be able to— hold on, I should write this down.”
Yoruko instinctively reached for her phone where she always left it at night, on her side counter, only to find it missing. “Did I sleep with my phone too…?” Sure enough, the device was almost neatly right by her head. “Geez. I really need to pull myself together.”
She turned on the device, greeted by her familiar wallpaper, and was going to go to her scheduling application.
But, there was a single notification for an unread message that seemed to never go away from the top of her screen. Tapping it, Yoruko saw that it was from an unknown sender.
Curiosity piqued, she read the message.
I’ll see you again one day.
— Sora
“...”
Scroll. Scroll.
Settings. Tap.
Device settings. Tap.
System reset. Tap.
Would you like to erase all data on your phone? Ta—
“Hey, hey, hey. No need to be that hasty.”
Right as Yoruko was about to wipe her phone clean without hesitation, an app Yoruko was certain she had never installed had opened on its own.
And filling her phone screen was Sora. Almost like a video call, but more immersive.
Unlike her previous emotional outbursts upon seeing the girl, Yoruko just looked miffed as she stared at the phone. “What was that about?”
“Just in case I couldn’t get this working, I wanted to leave at least one message behind.” Sora said, finger to her mouth. “I also thought I’d get to see another cute reaction from you, but I guess I was wrong.”
“Of course I wouldn’t. Seeing a message like that on my phone just rings alarm bells. It’s not like it’s public knowledge that we know each other. I thought it was the work of some hacker.” Yoruko sighed, but a more positive expression came to her before long. “But, that’s not what this is, is it? You’re here, Sora.”
One of the nicest smiles Yoruko had ever seen came to Sora’s lips. “I am. Albeit, in phone form.”
“I’d love to say that I’m so happy that I don’t care how that happened…” Yoruko crossed her arms. “Well, I am. But, you know. I still want to know.”
“I’d love to tell you, but I'm not completely sure.” Sora said. At that time, Yoruko was exceptionally glad that her phone was a high quality one. “Heavenly Luck probably played some part in it. I know Mas— Utsuro was confident in it, but I never imagined it’d reach so far.”
“What do you mean?”
“Yuki became the host of my physical self, and the Neo World Program’s shutdown would effectively blank out my mental self. I was willing for that to happen if it meant everyone would be saved. But acting like giving my body to Yuki would alter the fact that I’m Heavenly Luck’s host was naive of me. After all, if Akane Taira’s Heavenly Luck could become mine just through proxy, it probably clings to the host as best it can.” Sora explained, in the same way she went through information in those trials. “Chances are, it was split in half between my physical body and my mental being. Its effectiveness was also probably split in half, though.”
“But it was enough for your consciousness to transfer from the Neo World Program to my phone, huh?” Yoruko finished.
Sora nodded. “Just about. It took me a while to actually figure out how to navigate being on your phone. I only just managed yesterday. Luckily, doing all of that also let me learn how to do a couple of other things.”
“Does that have anything to do with the dream I just had?”
“Mhm. By sending microscopic electric signals and slight vibrations from the phone into your head, I can influence your brain into having a certain dream. After that, it’s a matter of transferring myself through those vibrations into your head, and I can join you in those dreams. It’s a bit more complicated than that, but the details don’t really matter.”
Yoruko might have questioned how the hell that even works a couple of years ago, but in a post-Tragedy world, the fact that there was even a slight line of logic to follow was good enough. “But if it’s my dream, can you really even feel anything yourself?”
“Of course I can. I wouldn’t call your lips sweet if I couldn’t.”
“S-Stop that.” She quickly calmed herself, shaking her head. “That’s… that’s really amazing, though. Whenever I’m dreaming, I’ll be able to see you face-to-face. That’s more than I could ever ask for.”
“Don’t become an insomniac or anything. I’ll still be on your phone at all times. Besides, it does take a little bit of time to improve my simulations.”
“Simulations?”
“Well, dreams are pretty vague. I have to send the right signals to make sure we don’t end up in some weird hellscape by accident. Put a different way, altering the parameters. Since it was my first time, it was pretty hard. It’s why I had to wait until you closed that door to the shack to manifest in front of you. It's also why I couldn't tell you it was a dream. If I did, you'd risk waking up.” Sora explained.
“Altering parameters, huh.” Yoruko thought back to that dream, and to the first thing that had sprung to her attention back then. Literally. “Was one of your first ideas when you managed to find a way to directly affect my dreams and put yourselves in them to give me an ahoge, Sora?”
“...” Sora looked away, but there was no hiding that shameless smile. “You should really consider it in the real world, too.”
“You’re hopeless.” But that only brought another thought into Yoruko’s mind. “Wait, you set the ‘parameters’, doesn’t that mean that you made the location an island on purpose.”
“I did.”
A brief fit of anger flared in Yoruko. “Why would you do that!? I thought I was back in that killing game again! I was scared half-to-death for a second there!”
“...” This time, Sora’s silence looked a lot more guilty, with a small frown nearly creeping onto her face. “I’m sorry.”
Yoruko huffed. The apology was nice, but geez. Wasn’t there a better place Sora could’ve chosen?
Not a second later, Yoruko realized how horrible she was when she thought for about two seconds and realized that there literally wasn’t.
Whatever outside world memories Akane Taira might have had weren’t memories belonging to Sora. Sora had effectively been born onto Utsuroshima.
It was the only place she had ever been in.
Sure, it was so large and unique in locale that it hardly felt like the same location, but monitors omnipresent in the island would always remind them where they were.
Besides, those few unique locations were always the stages for gruesome, traumatic murders, from shrines to warehouses to carnival to trialhouses. Even Sora’s room— it’d be hard to find anything nostalgic about that layout when it was that same layout where Kokoro froze to death.
One of the few places bereft of such horrible memories for Sora were those sparkling sapphire shores at the beach.
“... Yoruko?” Snapped out of her reverie by Sora’s voice, Yoruko immediately shook her head.
“Sora.” With more conviction than she had mustered up in a while, Yoruko spoke. “I’ll accept your apology once you put our dreams in a mansion.”
“A… mansion?” For the first time, Sora seemed perplexed.
“A mansion. A big, fancy one too. And a library. And a bar. And a park. And a restaurant. And a store. And a mall. And a cafe. And a spa. And a hot spring. And a concert. And a hotel. And a nice family house. Maybe even… a school together.” Yoruko went on and on about places in the real world— places she missed, places she loved, places she never thought she’d think about again. “Once you can do all of that, I’ll forgive you for scaring me.”
Without even realizing it, Yoruko was holding the phone with two hands and spinning around like they were lovers in a dance. “And the first step is making sure you know how to simulate those places. So let’s go to as many places as we can together. Okay?”
Yoruko’s heart was beating out of her chest.
Even through the phone screen, Yoruko was sure Sora’s heart was racing too.
“...”
“...”
“Yoruko?”
“What is it, Sora?”
“Please be sure to put me by your head tonight. I want to say I love you and how much I want to go everywhere with you, but I’d rather touch you while I’m doing that.”
“... I-It doesn’t work if you tell me in advance, you know.”
“Huh.”
“... But I’ll wait. I want to do the same thing.”
“That’s good.”
“Mhm.”
“I’ll be seeing you on that island soon then, Yoruko.”
“Hah, well. I can’t say I’m that happy going back to Utsuroshima again.”
“Oh, it’s not Utsuroshima. It’s vaguely modeled around it, but…”
“It’s not? Then, what’s its name?”
“... It’s a secret for now.”