Work Text:
Yukiko is going to die in seven days.
—
Day 7
“Yukiko? Are you ready?” Chie knocks on the door to her best friend’s room, four times in rapid succession. “Come on, we’ll be even later than usual, and it’s a Monday! We can’t start the week off like this!”
“Just a second, Chie!” The response is muffled, as if Yukiko is talking through clothes, and the mental image of a sweater wrapped around her head makes Chie snort. She replies, ‘hurry!’ one more time and then leans against the opposing wall, waiting.
It takes approximately forty seconds for the door to whirl open, revealing Yukiko. “-pwah! Okay, let’s go, quick!” She straightens her clothes, and - she’s dressed in the school uniform just like everybody else, but she makes it look gorgeous. She makes everything look gorgeous. Maybe it’s her pin straight hair that swishes past her thighs, or her pretty eyes, or her soft mouth, or the way she laughs.
Maybe it’s because she’s a god, but Chie knows she’d be just as beautiful if she wasn’t one.
“-ello, Chie?” A hand waving in front of Chie snaps her out of her thoughts, and she straightens. Yukiko looks amused, a smile curling her lips gently. “You were just complaining about how we’re going to be late, but -”
Blinking rapidly, Chie straightens. “Oh - jeez, sorry! Let’s go let’s go let’s go!” Grabbing Yukiko’s hand, she makes a beeline for the door.
“Good morning to you too,” Yukiko laughs out, letting herself be dragged along, and Chie throws her a grin over her shoulder.
“It’s always a good morning when I’m here,” she declares, and turns away before her gaze can linger too long on the redness that spreads over Yukiko’s cheekbones. “So! You know how last night I texted you about the video game that was released? Well, I was playing it, right, and -”
They’re halfway to school, walking past the riverbed, and Chie is still talking about the new Fighter game when they’re abruptly stopped by an old lady. “Excuse me… are you a god?”
Ah.
Chie stops at the same time as Yukiko, and they both turn to look at the grandma.
Yukiko smiles. It’s pretty and demure and absolutely fake. “Yes, ma’am.” Her posture automatically straightens, falling back into old patterns drilled into her. “It’s nice to meet you.”
The lady squints. “When do you…”
Chie stiffens. Yukiko smiles slightly wider, expression carefully blank. “Next week, ma’am.”
Next week. Next week, she turns 18.
“Ohh, bless us!” The grandma immediately bows her head, and Yukiko startles. Even now, after so many years of this, she’s not used to it. The lady starts mumbling a prayer, pressing her hands together, and Yukiko steps forward. Or tries to - she’s still holding hands with Chie.
For some reason, Chie can’t bring herself to let go.
Yukiko turns to look at her. “Chie -” she whispers, and stops, gently sliding her hand out of Chie’s grasp.
Clenching her hand into a fist to stop herself from grabbing Yukiko’s hand again, Chie takes a small step back. She hates this. She hates when strangers stop Yukiko and demand her attention and ask her to bless them as if she has the ability to do that.
That probably makes Chie a bad person, but she can’t really bring herself to care.
A complicated expression flashes across Yukiko’s face, but before Chie can decipher it she turns back to the grandma and holds her by her shoulders, gently straightening her. “It’s okay, ma’am, you don’t need to -”
Yukiko’s hand is cold, but the absence of it makes Chie’s hand feel numb.
(They’re almost twenty minutes late to class, and Chie gets thoroughly chewed out, but no one says anything to Yukiko.)
—
Day 6
“What do you want to watch, Chie?”
Glancing at the calendar next to Yukiko’s bed, Chie hesitates.
Following her gaze, Yukiko looks at the calendar too. “Please. Let’s just -”
“Okay,” Chie nods, because she’s never been able to say no to Yukiko, and sits down on the small couch. “I don’t have anything in mind, you can choose.”
Yukiko tilts her head, grateful. “Okay then.” She starts something up and dims the lights before she settles in next to Chie, a solid, familiar presence.
The movie starts. Chie’s mind drifts.
There’s certain facts about the gods everyone is taught as soon as they’re old enough to understand.
Fact one - every fifteen years, two gods are born into the world as humans. They’re identifiable by the tattoo they are born with, a golden design engraved somewhere on their body. They’re kept a secret - Chie has no idea what Yu’s tattoo was. But she does know Yukiko’s: is a swirling flower on her left forearm, a pattern it’s become a habit for Chie to trace when they’re just sitting there. She’s not an artist by any stretch of the imagination, but the tattoo is so familiar to her she can draw it with her eyes closed.
Fact two - the human-gods don’t really have any powers they can control. They’re just regular people. But most people give them a wide berth, fearful of some divine wrath. Chie thinks it’s stupid. Yukiko is just Yukiko, nothing more and nothing less.
Fact three - on their 18th birthday, the god dies. Their mortal body disappears, and they go to wherever the other gods are. They leave behind nothing except a small wooden token, the shape of their tattoo engraved into it.
On the calendar next to Yukiko’s bed, there’s a date circled in red pen - next Monday.
In the dark room, Chie stares at it. She wants to tear the calendar to shreds. Instead, she traces the golden flower on Yukiko’s forearm. In response, Yukiko hums and leans her head on Chie’s shoulder. The show they’re watching continues flashing, green and red and white.
—
Day 5
Yukiko sucks at math, which Chie thinks is incredibly funny.
“It’s not funny, I’m suffering,” Yukiko complains as she playfully kicks Chie under the table. “It doesn’t make any sense, how am I supposed to find the derivative of this?”
“You’re asking me?” Chie points at herself incredulously, and after a moment, Yukiko snorts.
“You’re right, never mind.”
“Okay, well, now I feel kind of insulted?”
Waving a hand, Yukiko presses her lips together to hold back her laughter. “Sorry, sorry, just go back to your work - pfft -”
Chie kicks her.
“Hey!”
It takes them another five minutes to calm down and go back to their homework, but they manage to do it eventually. It’s a futile effort though, and Chie stares at her notebook, wondering if she should just give up and call it a day. It’s not like she’s going to get anything done just blinking at it uselessly, and they’ll probably take it up tomorrow in class, so -
“Have you heard from Yosuke recently? How is he?” Yukiko asks suddenly, and the question catches Chie so off guard she accidentally draws a line through half of the page in front of her.
“Yosuke?”
Yukiko hums, and Chie stares down at her page. Yosuke is - her best friend. They’ve known each other since middle school, and he’s probably the person who knows the most about her. The reverse is true too, of course, but…
In the last few months, he’s disappeared. He’s decided not to come to school for the rest of the year, and he only works the occasional shift at Junes, so to most people, it probably feels like he’s vanished off the face of the earth. Although Yukiko wasn’t as close to him as Chie is, they were still friends, so it’s not surprising for her to ask about him, but still. They haven’t talked about Yosuke since Yu died. It’s surprising for him to come up out of the blue like this.
Or maybe not.
Blinking rapidly, Chie reaches out to grab an eraser. “He’s still Yosuke,” she says, and leaves it at that.
Yukiko looks at her - through her - and nods lightly. “Tell him I say hi?”
“Ugh, no, tell him yourself when he comes back to school next year,” Chie replies without thinking about it, and then immediately wants to bite her own tongue.
Instead of berating her, or getting mad, Yukiko just smiles.
Chie manages to tear a hole into her paper with the eraser.
—
Day 4
“Get off me, Yukiko!”
“Hmm, let me think about it,” comes the response, though it’s abundantly clear Yukiko is doing no thinking and only buying time for her to wrap her arms tighter around Chie’s waist.
“You’re so cold,” Chie complains, laughing as she playfully shoves Yukiko away. “You’re leeching all my warmth, get off!” She stays still though, making it as easy as possible for Yukiko to actually hug her. She’s… weirdly cold sometimes. It makes Chie feel odd.
Pushing even closer, Yukiko just snorts. “I’m not leeching anything, you’re just super hot -” a knock interrupts, and like a switch flipping, Yukiko pulls away so quickly it gives Chie whiplash. Gods aren’t supposed to have so much physical contact with mortals, especially not something this playful. And when they’re together, they always break that rule, because Yukiko is just Yukiko and she needs hugs too, but after years of being reproached, she’s learned to shift to her proper god persona incredibly quickly. It still leaves Chie a bit lost, sometimes.
“Girls?” The Amagi Inn’s owner calls out, voice light. She’s raised Yukiko like her own daughter, though she too is careful about respect. “Are you going to go out soon?”
“I think -” Glancing at Chie, Yukiko makes a questioning face, and Chie nods. “Yes, we’ll be heading out soon!”
“Alright then,” comes the reply. “I’m heading up to bed, so make sure you take the key to the entrance with you, okay?”
Chie responds this time. “Got it! We’ll be careful!”
A small laugh, and then footsteps padding away.
In the resulting silence, Chie glances at Yukiko, who is already looking at her.
Snorting, Chie sits up properly. “Let’s go?” She holds out a hand, like she needs to be pulled up.
Cold fingers wrap around her hand. “Let’s.”
They put on their shoes and leave with nothing except their phones, making sure to lock the front door before setting off. It’s an old habit of theirs - every time Chie sleeps over at the inn, they go for a late night walk. There’s nothing to worry about because Yukiko’s aura keeps most people away, and anyway Inaba is quiet and sleepy so there’s no one really to keep away in the first place.
This late at night, Yukiko’s innate godly charm is even more obvious. She seems to glow, a little bit, against the backdrop of the night sky. They’ve talked about it before - each god is in charge of a minor domain, and Yukiko thinks her will be something silly, like small pebbles or the ripples of water when a stone is skipped. Chie is certain, though, that Yukiko is going to be a god of something in the sky. She looks like something ethereal even in her mortal body as she walks next to Chie, eyes faintly sparkling and hair seeming to move on its own. Her otherworldly beauty is off putting to some people, but Chie can’t ever seem to pull her gaze away.
“So,” Yukiko starts, interrupting Chie’s thoughts. “What are your birthday plans?”
Chie comes to a grinding halt, freezing in the middle of the pavement.
Yukiko doesn’t notice, or maybe she pretends not to - she gets one, two, three, four steps ahead before she pauses and turns around. “Chie? What’s wrong?”
And - it’s such a simple question, such a common one, but coming from Yukiko it means -
Chie swallows. “Just the - usual, I guess,” she manages, and she’s proud of the way her voice only cracks once. “Cakin’ it up!”
And - it’s such a stupid joke, it’s not even a joke, but she says it anyway because she knows Yukiko, she knows her best friend of seventeen years and -
Yukiko laughs. Loud and undignified and doubled over, she laughs, and it makes the stars behind her dizzyingly bright, almost too hard to look at. “C-cakin’ it up,” she manages, and the sky reaches out, like it’s trying to brush along Yukiko’s spine, grab her and take her away, and Chie feels the sudden, violent urge to scream and scream and never stop.
(Chie is twenty seven days younger than Yukiko. Her 18th birthday is twenty seven days after Yukiko’s.)
—
Day 3
At school, people are even more quiet and cautious around them than usual, which is saying something. They keep whispering and stealing glances, and Yukiko looks deeply uncomfortable which makes Chie want to yell at them, but there’s something terrified and cold making a home in her bones so all she can do is stick to Yukiko like glue and try to not think about what any of this means.
After school, Chie cries in the bathroom, washes her face and tries to act normal. She’s not sure she succeeds.
—
Day 2
They spend all day going around Inaba, visiting all their favorite places. It feels like a goodbye, even though neither of them say anything about it.
They start at Yukiko’s house. They have breakfast, still half asleep, then after spending a bit too long getting ready, picking out ridiculous outfits for each other, they go to the Central Shopping District. It’s kind of sad and empty, but Yukiko likes less crowded spaces so they just walk around, pointing out silly things to each other and talking about nothing. They duck into the few shops that are still open, but they don’t buy anything - Chie because she’s broke, and Yukiko because she doesn’t need to.
Which -
Chie drags them to the Samegawa Flood Plain, then, and tries to convince Yukiko to take a dip into the water. She doesn’t succeed, and sulks while Yukiko attempts to fish poorly. It doesn’t last long - the sulking and the fishing - and they start finding stones to skip instead.
(They give Tatsuhime Shrine a wide berth.)
By lunchtime, they’re both sweaty and giggly and tired, so they decide to go to the Junes food court. It’s a bit crowded usually, but today isn’t too bad and they manage to snag seats pretty quickly.
“There is no way you think fishing is better than swimming, what the hell, all you do is sit there and just -”
Yukiko steals a piece of yakitori off of Chie’s plate and shakes her head. “You don’t get it, Chie, it’s so peaceful and quiet and you get to eat fish at the end?”
Chie just huffs, leaning back in her chair. “You can’t even -”
“Chie? Yukiko?”
The voice makes them both pause, and Chie spins around in her seat to find the person it belongs to. “Yosuke?”
Waving sheepishly, Yosuke grins. “Hi guys! Hey Yukiko, long time no see, huh?”
Yukiko waves back, but all Chie can do is stare. Seeing Yosuke is like a gut punch. He… looks different.
Well. Not really. He still looks the same as always, dorky haircut and Junes uniform and too-long limbs. But he’s - ever so slightly off. His smile curves differently, more soft, and his eyes aren’t quite so bright. And he waves cheerfully at them like nothing is wrong, but Chie still remembers the day after Yu’s birthday - the way Yosuke had shown up at her house, looking close to death himself. The way he’d done nothing but cry, even though he always complained it was so ‘unmanly to cry, Chie, it’s gross’. And - here he is, smiling like nothing is wrong. Like he’s okay now, even though a part of his heart is missing.
Chie shifts. “I -” she cuts herself off. “Washroom. Be right back!” And she gets up and almost runs, trying to get away as fast as she can. She feels guilty about it, but she just - she can’t look at Yosuke right now. She can’t.
“Chie,” Yukiko’s voice calls after her, and she almost turns, but bites her lip and keeps walking. She can’t. Not right now, not so close to -
Looking at Yosuke is like looking at a mirror into the future, and that terrifies her. Chie knows, she knows what fate awaits her, but she doesn’t want to see it. She doesn’t want to know. She just -
“It’s okay,” Yosuke’s voice floats after her. “I get her, don’t worry.”
Yosuke gets it, because of course he does. He was the same in the winter.
(Later, on their way home, Chie stops in a hidden corner and pulls Yukiko into a hug. She hugs her so tight it’s bound to hurt, and Yukiko feels so slender and delicate in Chie’s arms it feels like she might snap in two but Yukiko doesn’t complain, doesn’t push away, doesn’t say a word. She just hugs Chie back, cold and comforting and like a goodbye.)
—
Day 1
Gods can, and do, lie. It’s a misconception that some people have - gods are perfect, untouchable beings who are physically unable to lie and never make mistakes. It’s not true.
Yukiko, sitting across from Chie in her small bedroom, looks strangely incorporeal - like if Chie reaches out, she will dissipate.
Clenching her hands into fists, Chie shoves them into her lap. “Yukiko. Are -” her voice cracks, and she clears her throat. “Are you okay?”
“Chie,” Yukiko replies, and her voice sounds - off, almost like she’s saying two things at once. Her gaze roams over Chie’s face, searching for something, and maybe she finds it and maybe she doesn’t. She smooths a hand over her nightgown. “I’m okay. We should go to bed.” A lie, an easy one, rolling off of her tongue.
“Okay,” Chie says after a moment, instead of screaming and tearing everything around her into nothingness. They both roll out their futons, practiced and familiar, done a thousand times before, and it’s.
They lie down. Chie squeezes her eyes shut and tries not to think about anything.
A minute, then another.
“Chie?” Yukiko’s voice calls out, soft. “Are you asleep?”
No thoughts. Chie is not thinking about anything.
“I’m sorry,” Yukiko says.
And. It’s.
“For everything.”
It’s too much. It’s too much, Chie can’t do this, how is she supposed to just let Yukiko go, let her die and just live on by herself and turn 18 and 19 and every other age Yukiko will never get to be and how is she supposed to live without Yukiko, so much and so beautiful and everything Chie can never be and Yukiko, who is always running late and is terrible at math and Yukiko who Chie can’t help but -
She sits up and turns to Yukiko, chest heaving. Chie thinks she might be sick, but it’s not bile in her throat, it’s words, desperate and clogging her airway and impossible to get out and what is she even supposed to say, she can’t do this she can’t she can’t she can’t -
A cold hand touches her cheek. Chie shudders, and Yukiko blinks up at her. She runs a gentle thumb over Chie’s cheek, and - oh, she’s crying. Yukiko is crying. That’s not - she’s not supposed to cry.
“I -” reaching out her trembling hands, Chie cups Yukiko’s face, trying not to shake too much. She opens her mouth to say something, anything, but she doesn’t know what to say, how to loosen the buildup in her throat enough to breathe properly, but she doesn’t have to because Yukiko reaches up with her other hand and pulls Chie closer, closer, until their foreheads are touching, and smiles.
She smiles, and Chie’s world comes to an abrupt, total end.
“Chie,” Yukiko whispers through her tears, and she is so close her breath brushes over Chie’s lips, and she looks like she’s going to disappear, not quite fully there, and oh, Chie is crying too. Why did no one tell her she was crying?
“Y-” Chie tries, but it gets tangled between a sob and an unspoken rage and anger and guilt and sadness so sharp it feels like she might choke, and Yukiko’s eyes don’t look quite human anymore, pupils dilating into something that looks like stars, and it’s not enough, there’s not enough time and there’s too much and Chie doesn’t know what to do so she squeezes her eyes shut again and just sobs and tries to swallow and Yukiko’s hand is - warm, suddenly, and -
Chie’s eyes snap open. Yukiko is never warm. She’s always cold. Always. She’s not. She -
Yukiko tries to smile again. It’s pretty and demure and so, so fake. Chie hates that smile so much, she hates it she can’t stand it and she doesn’t want to look at it anymore and it’s Yukiko and Chie has never, not even once, been able to look away from Yukiko, so she lets out another sob and then leans down and closes the infinitely small gap between their lips and kisses her god.
—
(Yukiko is asleep, hair spilling out around her head like a halo and nightgown rumpled. Chie silently turns on her phone, hands trembling.
> id ont know hat to do
> how do i
> she isnt going to
> ysouke i cant watch her leave i cant do it i dont watn to please i cant
> what am i supposed to d
> o without her
< chie breathe
< stop just breathe
< yeah
< its okat
< *okay
< she gets it
< she knows you
< she
< i’m sorry
> did i do the right thing
< i dunno what you did
< but yes
> is it easier
> after a while
< no not really
< sorry
Chie laughs through her tears.)
—
Day 0
The bed is cold when Chie wakes up. The only thing left behind is a small wooden token, a too-familiar swirling flower engraved on it.