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Saiki’s sense of timing was apparently terrible. Instead of submitting himself to the fatalistic prod of destiny in high school, back when Aiura first insisted that they were, indeed, soulmates, Saiki waited years and year, until their lives had meandered down different paths and they hadn’t seen each other for almost a decade.
He happened across her in the snack aisle of a convenience store, their hands bumping into each other as they reached for the same box of chocolate cakes. He should have known it was her, should have recognized the familiar voice of her peppy-yet-blunt thoughts echoing in the store. But he wasn’t thinking about running into any of his old pals from PK Academy. He lived further out of the city these days, preferring fewer neighbors and a longer commute to work each day. He didn’t see many people at all once he got off the train stop in his neighborhood and the ones he did see were mostly elderly. So what was Aiura doing here?
Turns out she was in something of a nursing home, though she kept that thought locked away at the moment. Instead, she flashed Saiki one of her signature toothy grins and a peace sign, offering him the last box of chocolate cakes with her usual goodwill.
She ended up eating half the box that night when he invited her back to his place to catch up. And somehow, in the confines of his small country home, huddled under the kotatsu table, he felt it. That stirring in his chest, that twinkle in his eye, that flip in his stomach. He was no longer a jaded, know-it-all teenager. He was still aloof, stubborn, but against all odds, he’d become a bit more mature. That night, he accepted fate.
Terrible, terrible timing it was. Aiura told him, in her usual blunt way, after he’d given her a kiss goodnight, “Sucks, though. ‘Cuz I’m, like, totes dying.”
The thought that she’d concealed from him all evening bubbled to the forefront of her mind as she stood at his doorway, ready to walk back to the facility where she’d been living. With all the other old people in the countryside. She was dying. She’d been sick for the last few years, and now it wasn’t even treatable. She’d never get better.
Of course, Saiki didn’t accept that. “I’ll restore you. We’ll go back seven years,” he offered. He even began tugging the limiter from his skull.
But she stilled his hand. “I do not want to go back to my early twenties. No thank you. And besides, this is, like, chronic. Like, I didn’t catch it. It’s genetics. You can’t make it go away.”
“Do you feel well today?” he asked her.
She rolled her neck and stretched her arms behind her back. “Relatively,” she said.
Saiki nodded. “Then I’ll keep you like this.”
Aiura moved out of the nursing home and into Saiki’s country home. And from then on, she never aged a day.