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“I should tell her.”
Mumei blinked. “Tell who?”
“Watson. Before she leaves.”
“Oh.” She idly stirred her finger in her scorching cup of coffee. Why her roommate hadn’t stopped her was… fairly obvious from the look on her face. “She said she’ll visit, right?”
“That’s not…”
Mumei sent her a message. “Two tickets to the aquarium.”
“What? No, hang on, that’d make it a-”
“You want to tell her, right?” The owl’s bright eyes stared into her soul. “She’s leaving tomorrow, so tell her today.”
“...The aquarium, though? That’s kind of on the nose, isn’t it?”
“I can give them back to IRyS-”
“No! No, I’ll ask her, okay, I just- Yeah. I’ll go do that. Right now.”
Mumei smiled. “Good. Oh, and don’t use the fish as an excuse not to tell her!”
“I won’t!”
-----
For the first hour of their walk through the aquarium, Ame heard nothing but fish facts, and that was perfectly fine with her.
“-And people love to say that mantis shrimp can see colors mortals can’t,” her date (because why else would she’ve invited her to an aquarium) was saying, “but a lot of them live in environments that don’t require them to distinguish between saturation gradients, so it’s not that their vision is better, it’s just different. If you showed them some pictures, they wouldn’t be able to see what’s… right in front of them… Um…”
Watson had had a lot of moments like this over the past few weeks; the closer her departure date came, the more people wanted to do stuff like this. Some of them even-
“Can we, um… sit down?”
“Sure.” Ame led her over to a bench across from a deep ocean display. Small lights illuminated the path, but the water was dark so the bioluminescent organisms could be seen at their brightest. “This is your first time visiting this aquarium, isn’t it?”
Her date didn’t reply for a while. “We should’ve come here sooner.”
“Yeah?”
“When-” A squid, brilliantly glowing in the empty darkness, left her momentarily frozen. Watson saw the light reflecting in her teary eyes. “When Sana left, I promised I would be better about this kind of thing, but…”
Ame wanted to reach out and touch her shoulder, to try and comfort her, but she hesitated.
“Sometimes, I try to remember her voice, and it doesn’t come back to me.”
“Kronii-”
“I don’t want to forget you, too.” Kronii slumped forward, elbows against her knees, face in her hands. “Because now the thing I remember about her most is what I should’ve said, the memories I should have of her, and I… I don’t want to do that again!”
Watson moved closer, slid an arm behind her shoulders. “I’ll always have your watch. We can talk with that.”
“Y-yeah, but-”
“If you’re worried about forgetting me,” she continued, “I’ll spam your inbox with so many messages, you’ll go back to being annoyed at me.”
The Warden turned to her, one eye peeking through her fingers. “But it’s not…”
“You’ll have so many pictures of Bubba, they’ll ask if he’s your dog-”
“I don’t want your pictures of your time-mutt! I want you!” Her outburst echoed off the walls. “...I-I meant-”
Ame hiccuped. She pulled her hand away.
“I-I know I’m not-”
*hic*
“I didn’t know how to-”
*hic*
“Are you-”
A massive jellyfish passed over Watson shaking in silent sobs, tears streaming through her cupped hands.
Kronii’s heart broke in a corner she didn’t realize was still intact. “Watson-”
“Why?” She managed in stuttered gasps. “W-why did you *hic* wait?”
“I thought I had more time-”
Ame whirled to face her, still lit in jellyfish-light. “I did, too! And now we’re saying good *hic* bye f-for I don’t know how long *hic* and this is what I’ll remember of *hic* us, and I don’t w-want that! *hic*”
“I-I’m sorry…”
“I know! I *hic* know…” Watson reached into her pocket and pulled out a tissue to clear her nose. “Ugh… Call me, okay?”
Kronii nodded, wiping her eyes. “I will.”
“Good…” She sat up, breathing slowly, deliberately.
“You, um…” The Warden tried to do the same, but she couldn’t slow hers as much. “W-when you meet her - y-your old Warden - um…”
Ame choked up again as she reached for her hand. “You’ll always b-be my Warden.”
“A- I-”
It was a miracle she ever stopped crying after that.